


The Orphan, Whittling.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: A slew of original characters - Freeform, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blow Jobs, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hallucinations, Intimacy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mount Massive Asylum, Murkoff Corporation, Non-Consensual Electroconvulsive Therapy, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rimming, Romance, Slow Burn, Surgery, Survival, Survival Horror, Unorthodox Therapy, aggressive love, and yet they love each other so much, chris is lovin it, circumstances tho, full arc, long conversations, slut eddie gluskin, traumatized babies in love, warning: violent sexual language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9201371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: Eddie has been living in the Murkoff asylum for ages now, well aware of what works in his favor and what will bring him punishment.  Life is threadbare, but he's surviving it.  Then his doctor decides to shut him away in a cage and leave him to die.  When he sees the light again, Murkoff has crumbled from the inside out.(Less sci-fi elements: no Walrider/no Morphogenic Engine/etc)





	1. Carving Nature.

"Pretty boy," a voice sneers.

"Teeny baby," another mock-whines, "Curled up in his bed, everybody's favorite."

The drone of low-aimed attacks continue outside, some sentences definitively comprehensible, others just an auditory blur of words that have no shape or figure aside from their vaguely monstrous sketching. "Tch." Eddie defensively groans between his teeth and wraps the weighted blanket around his shoulders, entwining into himself. His knees are folded, shrinking him against where his bed meets the wall. His back is turned to his cell door, so that they cannot see his face. Their jaws are coming at him, but luckily are jammed down the hinge by the thick bars of his cell. He is a nurses' favorite; they sort of know better than to touch him anyhow.

The blue wool is scratchy against the letups in his tan jumpsuit, but the heavy balls between the stitching help keep him in the moment- not grounding him like they said, but it’s adequately successful at refusing to let him fall back into the past when they're a constant, physical reminder of how he has to fight against being pressed down. Maybe that _is_ grounding. This place is a weird hybrid of dungeon and new age psychology counselors trying to make a difference. The stars will go out of their eyes too. He doesn't care about that, except for that they'll stop favoring him once they realize that he's not going to be their damn miracle fix.

"Hey!"

Something hard slams up against his cell door, making Eddie jump. He grits his teeth in annoyance, but even he can hear the involuntary chattering that they make as he shakes.

"Get out of my unit," the voice commands, the man's palms hitting the bars in warning. "You and your faggot haircut and your special shit. What else you got in there? They let you hide other faggots under your bed?"

Eddie feels a vein of anger poke through his skin and travel up his neck. Hot, rageful humiliation warms him around the collar and suddenly he's flung the weighted blanket off him, on his feet. The patient snarls at him from behind the bars, another face he doesn't remember the specifics about. They all hate him. They think he's weak, and he was. But not since the treatment.

"If he were alive, I bet you'd fuck Wernicke for special privileges too."

The second his emotions flare, the muscles of his hand usurp his control. Eddie slams a fist into the collection of flower-holding vases that are on his dresser, smashing the glass containers against the wall. His fingers scramble for a shard, something sharp, mind gone automatic and ignoring the glass shrapnel sticking into his palm. He flings a fistful of jagged edges towards the cell door, crying out as he releases his fury into the patient's face. The man is sent screaming back, no doubt using this opportunity to make a show. Eddie's shoulders rise erratically as he heaves, uncurling his knuckles to see the damage he's done to himself now. At least _his_ face is still pretty.

"Get down Gluskin!" he hears them call from across the hall, over the stirring chaotic chatter that he's instigated. Eddie drops to the floor before they come in with their needles pointed, wincing as his palm hits the ground and the glass digs in.

The patient who came spewing vileness is crying on the floor now, whining and slobbering. Through his eyelashes, Eddie sees a young little thing go to comfort him, then looks up through darkened lids at the brawny men they've called to restrain him.

One pushes past as soon as they've undone the door and grabs him by the sleeve, yanking him to his feet. Eddie tries to keep his jaw up.

"What were you thinking, 196?"

"I was thinking that my privacy was being invaded," Eddie carefully maintains, letting himself be dragged from the comfort of his would-be room and out into the scrutiny of his peers, yelling crude comments to him.

"Boss, looks like he's blind in at least one eye," calls a woman crouched on the floor.

The hand clinging to Eddie's shoulder goes hard. "Fuck. Another damn thing. Why does Gluskin have glass in his cell? I need somebody to do a sweep right now!"

Eddie suddenly feels himself revolt, trying to yank out of the guard's grip. "Don't you touch my things," he hisses, "You're no better than the sick. You're mentally-- fucked up, all of you!" Seething, he makes brief eye contact with the woman on the ground, eyes fearful like a lover abused. His vision darts around wildly, trying to find a way to undo this and have her go back to bringing him sympathy and daisies for his cell, but the needle goes into his neck too fast.

In the hospital unit, they strap him to a table and talk him down. Somebody wheels him back to his cell later, his arm aching and head groggy. His glass vases are gone. His bed is stripped of all its linen. He doesn't get to think about it before he crashes into sleep.

-

Dr. Morgan lets herself in about an hour into his longest stretch of consciousness, holding a steaming Styrofoam cup and a fresh jumpsuit over her arm.

Eddie groggily accepts, pressing his chin to the rim and letting the steam travel against his face. He closes his eyes and breathes it in, the spicy, citrus luxury about the only inanimate thing left in his cell. "Careful, who knows what I'll do with something so _dangerous,_ " he purrs, swallowing the scent deeply and letting it run through is empty digestive system.

"They took your sheets to inspect them for hidden weapons," she explains firmly, always having been the most competent here. "More for making statement than anything else, of course. We can lie on the incident report to save our own skins, but that’s it for you, Gluskin.” The doctor sighs, but it sounds like a command. “You can have every rule-violation stockpiled here if we want. Or, you can have nothing."

Opening his wary eyes, Eddie lets the world shift back into place upon a few tentative sips from the cup. "I used to date a girl who worked in the emergency wing of a medical hospital," he mumbles into the drink, "I think you can probably guess where she was reluctant to send people; even the mad." He gestures to his empty bed. "Mental hospitals: no better than prisons. Free-for-alls. And not enough state interest in keeping any eyes inside." He smiles nostalgically. "I am certain she would have found herself in one if I did not pin her heart to the dresser."

Dr. Morgan watches him closely. "Violence seems to make you unexpectedly forthcoming."

Eddie sets the tea on the floor and stands, accepting the offered clothing set. He turns to the wall and strips his dirty suit off, hastily replacing it with what feels comparatively feathery and warm. "I can't get out of here. Somebody's going to succeed in killing me eventually. You can all have what you fucking want from me." He kneels back down and cups the tea in his hands, letting it fill his senses.

"I wish we could have spoken more about the land mines that set you off… but I think you understand why we need to move you."

Eddie's eyes flash, interested. "To which unit?"

"The female's ward has been vacant for months now. We're finally phasing people in; merely my best bribery at work, but I'm having you put in there first- it will be under my discretion to decide who will be transferred next, but for now, it's a short term solution for diffusing the tension that seems to follow you."

Flicking a hand, Eddie dismisses the claim. "I make people uncomfortable. No one likes seeing a victim of greater proportion doing better than you are." He honks out a slipped laugh. "Daryl, who I hope never fucking sees again, was phobic of dogs. He cries about it at night, did you know? I haven't shed a single tear since I was thirteen."

"Yes, I suspect you got it all out, what with all the weeping in the second to last row of that courtroom."

As she cocks an eyebrow, Eddie's face goes grave. "You will be glad to not be joining me in the female ward," he warns steadily, the upturned exposure of teeth not clearly a snarl, nor grin. "The smell of the cells they shed; the long locks of hair to be found between the mattress and the wall. What restraints could possibly be effective, with that power all around me?"

He does not take pursed lips lightly; he reads the unmoving words. They are not supposed to make comparisons to prison, and yet he knows this new residence is meant to be solitary confinement.

-

Tan is not suited to the underground level, apparently.

He is decked in a more mustard-like color as they wheel him down to the female’s ward, his limbs strapped into a gurney that has been disgracefully bled on by some anti-clotting-endowed patient. He tries to avoid being sick all over himself, but ends up not having to worry as Dr. Morgan hastens to catch up, soon walking in pace with his flat, helpless body. She greets his lazy grin with two fingers in his mouth and a squeeze on his jaw so that he will swallow the pill she’s shoved inside his cheek.

He is already falling into a rushed sleep as she bids him farewell.

“I hope you will like your new team,” she speaks evenly, an all-professional woman. “I also hope you will come to appreciate all we have provided you with, here. I expect great leaps in your treatment.” She pats him demeaningly a few times on the crown, and he thinks _oh God I’m going to puke_ before his body shuts down.

...

Eddie blinks himself slowly awake.

He’s on the floor, his arm stiff beneath him. It’s very dark, but he can see a pool blood and vomit seeping out from under him, and though he tries to let himself slip back into a fretfully unconscious state, his discomfort and disgust have stirred him far too greatly to go back. He presses his good arm to the floor and lifts himself up, bewildered.

Where is he?

Hell, he’d have no idea if this was the female ward or not. He’s never seen it before, and despite what he said to Dr. Morgan, it’s been so long since actual women were kept here that no trace of them are certain to linger anyways. As he climbs out of the mucky bed, he lets loose a snarl at the implication that he is the lone woman patient left in the asylum.

It is harrowingly silent.

He scurries away from the vomit, feet bare, which are the only sounds beside water dropping from the ceiling. He can’t even hear a shred of commotion from an above or adjacent unit- he scans the area, trying to will himself into a nocturnal creature, making out a spacious area that is wet and dark.

Cautiously, Eddie takes a few steps, his toes prickling at the damp filth in here. He grits his teeth, reaching out until he finds solid wall, and leans against it for support as he slumps his way around the perimeter of the room. He really did have a pleasant standard of living before, with his excess of soft things and trinkets that were meant to be banned from ever entering the building. Sometimes, it was enough for him to even feel like he was in a bona fide medical hospital. Like they were rewarding him for being sick, pitying him, even after all he did…

A protrusion hits Eddie’s hip and he grabs for it, twisting the door handle so that he may fling himself out of this place.

He’s been thinking it was a mistake, his being here, until he sees the bed provided for him in the small, square cubbyhole. A manila folder labeled _Gluskin_ waits on the bare bed.

Pictures of a child being fucked are hung all around the room.

-

Eddie roars as he rips them from the plaster, tearing them faster than he can catch his breath. His small eyes, usually closed, but when open, open _wide_ , watch him from behind the photographic barrier before he tears them into a million pieces. The boy has black, wild hair that his father insisted he grow long, and which is frequently being tugged at in the images. In his frenzy, Eddie stops to run his hands through his own chopped locks that never make it past his ears, reminding himself that he’s not on that side of the camera right now. He has to remember his finger is hovering above the shutter, ready to smash down the second he decides. His lungs are swelling erratically but he somehow wills himself to move slower, making a methodical deconstruction of the room.

He takes the home-made pornography down, one glossy defilement at a time.

There are pictures so disgusting he cannot remember them.

The normal ones, though, he knows he is so accustomed to that he hardly can think of them as single encounters, instead seeing them as a swirling entity that begins but does not end. These are Eddie-on-one, father _or_ uncle, the other taking great pains to ensure the rule of thirds is implemented. Maybe the whole camera thing was a joke, at first, a look-what-position-I-got-him-in-I-didn’t-know-humans-could-bend-that-way kind of thing, but it eventually elevated into an art.

Oh, and then a money thing.

Eddie hisses as he claws the last few from the ceiling border, standing on the bed to reach. He lets himself plop down onto the thing, its springs protesting, but he cannot keep his eyes off the picture that displays him alone in the center of the frame- probably around nine, and spilling cum from both ends while stuffed into the space of his bedroom closet which they adored using for these activities- but it is, essentially…. It’s Eddie. Through and through. He recognizes himself.

He keeps that photograph, even when he starts mutilating the other pictures with his teeth. (He swallows the pieces. They will never have this to hold over him again.)

When at last he leans back against the headboard to weep, foamy saliva spilling down his chin and scraps of gnarled paper clinging to his jumpsuit, Eddie finally remembers the file left for him. He cannot acknowledge it as tears spill down the corner of his eyes, thick and wet, as if shaming him for lying about his crying tendencies to Dr. Morgan. He feels the liquid clean him, washing the horror and humiliation away, until he is remade again. Now his fingers find their way around the folder, lifting it up to his knees.

His vision is pure, albeit blurred, as he flips open to the solitary page.

_To Patient 196,  
-Though I do like your name, Eddie,_

_Humanity isn’t something we particularly strive for at Murkoff. I suspect you recognize this._

_I’m sure you have lost your mind at least thrice since opening this, and though there is some sympathy to be had for that, that is not our goal here, so we must remain adamantly focused. We seek results, and while something such as a blindness can understandably be chalked up to patients not playing nice, it is an entirely more difficult matter for patient death to be reported in a way that is beneficial for all parties involved._

_You are a clear obstacle to patient rehabilitation, whether you intend to or not. And, as I’ve made clear already, there is no way in which this problem can be eradicated through gentle and simple means._

_So- as far as anyone is concerned, your treatment has now been greatly elevated, and you have been thusly transferred to a ward only recently opened. I have revoked the responsibility of you, and am no longer in charge of your case. I can hope that you will receive follow-ups with the other staff, but I am simply not in the position to ascertain that. If your death results from their neglect to check on your progress, then that- that is not my issue. My hands are clean._

_Please understand that this is best for all our patients, and that we will miss you on Unit C._

_Always take time for self-care,  
Dr. P Morgan. _

-

Eddie wakes with no desire to explore whatsoever.

Let me rot here, he thinks to himself, head lowered between his knees. He was raised in a closet, and he might as well die in one too. His talents are worthless, his offerings laughably meager. He has learned to salivate on command; he would know the difference between a human penis and rubber dog toy inside of him with his eyes closed, but never have any opinion on either. At least here, he knows he is utterly alone both inside and out.

The remaining shredded pictures and Dr. Morgan’s letter are under the mattress, corners poking out. He lies on his back and stares through half-closed eyes, not seeing the ceiling above him. She is right, in a way, about him being a hitch in the recovery of the patients. Treatment will never work on him, because though the last time he was raped by his father was 33 years ago, he has not lived a single day longer than the night before entering foster care. His body and mind have grown, but his soul still sucks cock right up until the sirens cause his dad to shove him away.

A stupid part of him suggests hanging the pictures back up.

After a couple hours, he finally discovers the energy he needs to drag himself into a sitting position, slouched against the bedframe. He wishes that they’d given a blanket along with the file. If he has to die down here, unobtrusively, he’d rather do it wrapped in a sheet. Certainly the absence of one bed set could not have caused a stir.

He can’t help but pull out the tattered remains of the nastiest picture in the lot, afraid to brush his thumb past the border of the photo when he holds it, but drawn to it nonetheless. Eddie examines it, his small body lost somewhere between the hairy curves of two grown men, respectively using his mouth and lower bits at once. He studies it for a long time, looking at his childish, sun-stained body, lanky without the presence of puberty, until he starts to think about how somebody must have had to put the camera on a timer in order to take it.

It’s a mundane thought, and staring at the picture, Eddie contemplates that if he can look at _this_ monstrosity, long enough that he’s eventually desensitized the urge to cringe, or sob, or puke- if he can actually _get bored of it_ , then- then maybe he can handle just about anything.

He bites his bottom lip angrily and the picture falls. He grinds it beneath his toes on his way out of the room.

...

Eddie’s eyes take a long time to adjust, so his brain has to fill in for their incompetency. The room they’d dumped him in must have served some communal purpose when there were patients here. He can imagine a chess set or a bed of magazines in the center of it; for some reason, he finds himself hoping that the women- gentler, kinder, had a different experience than the men do. But the grime on the floor and the squeaks of rodents in the dark suggest otherwise. (It also reluctantly suggests what his food source may be.)

Most of the doors that cling to the perimeter of this main room are locked. A set of double doors stand at the head of it, but even crashing the full strength of his shoulders against the hinges does nothing to splinter it. If he rubs his hands across the middle part of the door, he feels the cool texture of glass meet his fingers, but there is not even the darkest tease of light to be seen through it. It’s too dirty, or maybe there just isn’t any.

He lets himself through with the doorknobs that turn, finding other small padded cells with light bulbs that burn more dimly than his. These beds don’t even have mattresses. Some of their metal frames are vertical on the wall. There is a substantial-enough amount of blood on most of the floors that suffice to make him wonder what the fuck went on here.

The sixth room has no light switch, so with a hand protectively outstretched, Eddie wanders into it on his toes and flails for anything with a shape. “Oh fuck,” he exhales as his feet catch on an object, which rolls away under his knees and clatters against a wall he cannot see. Eddie scrambles to keep from falling as he chases after it, grabbing the cart by its rim. And, _oh-_ he sucks in his breath.

Whether it’s totally clean, or to-be-washed laundry, or fresh sheets that have been chewed by moths and spit back out yellow, he doesn’t care. He grasps the crumpled blanket into his chest and lets out a shaky, grateful breath, all but burying his head into it.

_Fuck my ass, self-care,_ he smiles to himself as he trudges home with the bundle of wool, making his way across the dark space and into the beacon of light that is visible where he left his door open. _The asylum has cared for me for once in its goddamn miserable life._ He can see now that his spoils are an off-white color, but all the stains are dry. He will double up on them and be a man on a cloud.

“That’s not entirely true,” he mumbles to his brain as he tucks the sheets under the mattress, then rolls onto his back to test them out. It’s so soft and supple that he almost wants to cry again. Sleep will not be hard to find.

Eddie feels the edge of the mattress’ bottom just to be sure the pictures are still there, safe with him.

It’s not that the asylum never gave him anything. It’s just- it was mostly that the nurses, the liaisons between patient and resource, had to steal from it before he could get anything. It wasn’t ever hard to get such simple luxuries from the young females in white, even if he bitterly feels that he should have had those things as general rights to begin with. Special treatment, yeah. Softer blankets, fast food smuggled in for him to scarf down, glass bottles, even once some cigarettes.

Everybody hated him because he was a doctor’s favorite, but he _earned_ that. And it’s not like he had a rate going or anything, but he did what he could to keep things… amicable. Future investments, probably.

He thinks that the girls probably liked him because he was broken but his teeth still shone bright. He hates to generalize, but so many of them got that same glazed look when they’d tend to a wound of his and he’d gently kiss their hand in thanks, or when letting loose a few feigned whimpers about his tragic past, how they would try to hide their swoons after he smiled and told them how much their listening helped him survive.

No one really feared him.

And if they were hesitant, it remained okay, because he didn’t need his wrists to be unstrapped from the gurney in order to flick his tongue when they climbed up to sit on his face. The ones who trusted him had their own hiding places. He’d let them take him into the closet and hoist them up against the wall so that he could make love to them slowly, suckling on their necks, whispering _oh darling, I thought I could never love again because of what they did to me, but here I am with you, like this._

He’s not sure if he enjoyed these things. The quiet flicker of his pleasure is so small and easily lost in the cavernous, swarming darkness that wraps around him. More than anything, he just wanted a soft female to coddle him. He wanted something that smelled other than piss to bloom in his cell.

But the sheets are so soft and delicate. He bunches them at the top and creates a pillow, thinking he wouldn’t mind bedding somebody here.

-

As far as eating goes, rat fur is best peeled with a sharp slab of wood that Eddie pulled off one of the doors. Even after being down here for so long, he has to lie on his back with his hand over his mouth to keep from throwing it up, lest he be forced to take in another mouthful of the filthy meat. Pleasure is nothing, keeping alive is everything. He’s going through the bulbs in the other bedrooms too fast for his liking.

He realizes he has an infection at some point, which straps him to the bed for a long time- it saves the bulb, at least, but keeps his stomach empty.

As his purple arm throbs, his father whispers to him during the drift through a feverish haze, mouthing at his ear, lapping at his lips. Eddie leans into that horrible kiss. He wants to go home, but his father’s brother is blocking the door.

The uncle touches him through the night, vanishing into nothing as soon as Eddie groans in his direction. The two figures swirl about him, taunting him. He can never catch them with his eye.

He sweats such cold fluid- he’s afraid they will hit him for not warming the bed.

He wants to talk to his father before he falls unconscious again, but the ghosts of his family are so thin that their anatomies don’t accommodate mouths.

-

An enormous crash brings Eddie yelping awake.

Blood and puss is crusted the entire length of his left arm. Sweat clings to his body in such large amounts that he knows he’s going to have to flip the sheets over again. But first, that sound-

He is dizzy with hunger, but he knows it wasn’t his imagination. The world feels distractingly crisp again, much more focused than before. He hopes the fever has broken, though he is trembling even now, as he softly creeps to the open door and peers into the main room.

He hears them sniffing around, first, their voices muffled.

His body is so different now. He can see through the dark, as if his eyes are no longer fooled by the black curtains that had been suddenly pulled around him. Eddie sees that the double doors have been broken, glass shattered, wood mangled on the ground. This area lets into a main hallway, an exact replication of the foyer space in the male ward. He is stunned already, but then he sees them. He freezes to the spot-

Just as they lift their necks and notice him.

Two brothers: the same age, height, weight, type of hunger in their eyes.

Father.

Uncle.

Father, Uncle.

These are not illusions from sickness. They are real- they are in here with him, and he is all alone.

He makes a wild dash for the door.

The first brother is faster, his large muscles propelling him across the floor and then diving into Eddie, bringing the man slamming onto the ground. _Is this father or is this uncle is this father or is this uncle_ but it’s too hard to focus on anything with the world crashing away.

“Look,” alerts the male on top of him, jumping up while grasping Eddie by the hair. He is speaking to his twin, who’s taking his time to approach.

“Look who it is,” the second affirms, coming up close as the first forces Eddie to his feet, knees shaking. The brother cocks his head and smiles, grabbing his brother’s shoulders so that they’ve made a barricade from which Eddie cannot be freed.

“Do you remember him from upstairs?”

“Months ago.” Rancid breath wafts across Eddie’s face as the even words are spoken. He starts keening, tears falling down.

“I thought they killed him.”

“And I thought they hid him away.”

The first smiles, complicit in triumph. “You won the bet. You can have him first.”

Eddie feels himself being thrust into the arms of the first, chest-to-chest. He shakes viciously; he knows what’s going to happen. One is going to hold him steady while the other fucks him from behind. He squeezes his eyes shut when he feels the man’s knuckles sliding down the side of his face, appraising his bone structure. It is a precursory gesture. The second body presses to his back, a hand going against his throat. He gasps as they make him keep his head up. He fumbles for eye contact and violently realizes that he is not looking at either his uncle or father. He is about to beg for his life.

Then everything is wrenched apart when a fleshy wall comes flying at them.

The first twin is punched in the face, knocked to the floor; the second is ripped off of him and held in the air for a moment, then flung into the wall.

“ _Men are pigs_!” his savior roars as Eddie folds onto the ground, legs no longer supporting him. He has just enough of an ego left inside to lift his head and watch the scene, not able to bear the idea of completely breaking for them.

The large man advances upon the two, who seem rightly humbled, glancing at each other with expressions of fright.

“Chris-” the first entreats.

Chris lunges his shoulders. It’s a warning. “You’re supposed to be looking for supplies.”

“Wait- we found-” the second pleads.

Chris finally turns to face Eddie, scanning him from head to toe. Eddie winces, feeling so violated already, but something shifts between them when the male suddenly registers something. He turns around to the brothers, barking. “ _Go_. This is Gluskin’s building now. If you touch him, I will rip the tendons from your broken necks.”

“Yes, Chris,” the older brother manages as he tumbles onto his feet and forces his twin to run with him. The sound of them scattering up the hallways stairs recedes. The man called Chris is coming forward and Eddie finally lifts a shaky finger into the air, trying to hold his ground between him and the apparent leader.

“How do you know me?” he demands.

Chris stops at once. He looks like he’s in a state of shocked reverence as he keeps his eyes wholly fixed on Eddie. When he finally speaks, the rough bite in his voice is completely gone. “This is where she put you?” he asks gently, like the wrong collection of words could make Eddie fall apart.

Carefully, Eddie climbs onto his feet, warily keeping the empty radius between them intact. “What’s going on?”

The man rubs the back of his neck, gathering a summary. Eddie doesn’t remember seeing him in Unit C, but he has lost so much health since the time he was there that he doesn’t trust his recognition. Eddie is so wary. He wants to return to his bed, but somehow he thinks things will never go back to how they were before. His quiet, unlikely room in the universe has been taken from him.

The man’s head shakes.

“I need to sit down,” Chris says.

Eddie doesn’t know what it is about that, but he feels a distinct sadness crack through his core. “Okay- come,” he guides the man, leading him to his room. Chris walks unsteadily, grunting with effort. They enter the place Eddie has been living in for these past months, which is sullied in filth. He apologetically motions towards his bed, but Chris doesn’t look twice as he sinks into it.

Exasperated, Eddie himself slumps against the wall and slinks onto the floor, letting his head loll. “What’s going on?” he asks again, “How did you get down here? Are you a patient?”

The eyes on him are not quite blank, but they are wide, filled with so much that it seems Chris doesn’t know where to start. He clears his throat, tilting so only the tops of his feet touch the floor.

“I was, well, we were,” he corrects himself. “Dr. Morgan transferred you.”

Eddie nods, thinking of the file that now bends beneath Chris’ weight. “After you were moved, one of the newer nurses caused a stir about following up with you on some matter. When she brought in outside police and they discovered the female ward entirely vacant, and when no staff members were forthcoming...” He pants between sentences, trying to fit everything in. “They basically threw her under the bus. Took her out for investigation.”

_Pity,_ Eddie thinks, then catches himself. He liked her, but she was not a good person. “You mean Dr. Morgan, I’m sure. Is it better without her, then? Did they give you more freedom? Were you released?”

Chris readjusts, eyes narrowed in not-exactly pain. “There is _only_ freedom. Things fell apart without her. A patient got the keys and let a lot more of us out. Most of the staff has been slaughtered. We have a couple left; we need their intel for the computers to make sure that it seems like everything is still running in here, but I… I’m doing what I can.” For a supposedly insane man, he talks about these things so apologetically. Eddie doesn’t feel insane, but he for sure doesn’t feel anything noticeably compassionate towards this information.

And when his eyebrow cocks in interest, Eddie feels some ancient part of him that was killed down here come back to life, if only to hear the story. “You’re their leader.”

Through heavy breaths, Chris nods. “You’re their legend though. You’re really the one who freed us, even if no one knew you were a sacrifice at the time.”

Eddie’s eyes drop and he sees a pool of blood beneath each of Chris’ feet, seeping onto the floor. “I’ll clean that,” Chris promises. Eddie is aware of a glint of silver as Chris shifts, the light catching something like metal beneath his feet. “Do you want a clean jumpsuit?”

His eyes flash up, wild. “Yes,” he breathes desperately.

Inhaling deeply, Chris grunts and decides he’s rested enough to rise to his feet. “It’s not a very handsome place up there. I can deliver some to you later if you want. A pillow, and uh, maybe sheets that aren’t so tattered.” He awkwardly lingers.

The male is imposing, tall and dangerous, not somebody Eddie would ever picture running out of breath even despite his thick size.

But if he can hide it, Eddie can too.

He jumps up before Chris can go. “I want to come with you.”

Chris pauses at the doorway, but then beckons his head forward without turning again. It’s gesture enough.

They move quickly through the central room, which Eddie finally sees in a fully illuminated state, what with the main doors toppled over and the prison’s light coming through. It truly is an empty quarter, though big enough to accommodate two-thirds of Unit C. As they step over the cracked double doors and into the main hallway, Eddie spins to discover where they are. “I really have been close to my old ward this whole time,” he murmurs to himself, looking at the locked elevator that he’s seen from three levels higher. “Why did they not find me when they searched the female ward?”

The foyer stretches massively, branching off into other halls that are obscured by doors. The carpet beneath his toes is soft, velvety, so different from the hard linoleum he’s been confined to that he almost moans aloud.

“They lied to you,” Chris explains as he turns towards the staircase, cardinally opposite to an exit door that Eddie has no use for. He follows behind the other, even though Chris takes each step sluggishly. “Not the female ward. You were put in an old hospital wing they don’t use anymore. I’m so sorry we didn’t explore it earlier. I- we didn’t think you were alive.”

From this angle, his neck poised up, Eddie again sees the gleam of silver from beneath Chris’ bare feet.

He slumps against the banister, the adrenalin dripping out of his system and leaving him prey to his wobbling head. “Is there… food?” he pries, stopped to press his forehead against his knuckle and will the stairs to remain static.

“I’ll feed you,” he hears Chris promise from the first landing.

They tread on until they reach the sixth floor, both panting for different reasons. Eddie’s bones feel so limp, sloshing around as liquid marrow between his veins. Taking in the familiar hallway, however, pumps him with a vigor that he thought was lost.

It looks so similar to the one a few flights down, and surely it’s identical to one of any of the other ten floors, but it feels like home. It’s the face of a lover who thought they’d never see him again. Things are different though. Furniture is knocked over and blood crawls the length of the floor, deep in the rug fibers. He has some time to take it in while Chris sits on the edge of the step and catches his breath.

Eddie resolves to return to his charming self as soon as he gets something less repulsive in his stomach.

“Will they be violent?” he asks of the patients.

Chris rubs his head. “Yes. But they will be kind to you.”

After a couple of minutes, he collects himself and finally gives Eddie permission to enter through the thick, stained Plexiglas door that leads into the male ward. He swallows a breath and forges forward, suppressing all signs of apprehension and illness. “They will respect me because they are afraid of you,” he fills in, trying to distract with his words so that he does not draw attention to the leap he feels within his chest. “How did you become the leader?”

He hears a pleased snort behind him. “They have visions but they’re scrawny- need a bigger guy to do the head ripping.”

Eddie feels suddenly inquisitive. He turns to face Chris, resting an elbow on the wall with the suggestion of open arms. “And how many heads have you ripped?” he smirks, eyes traveling the length of Chris’ arms; the veins that bulge predatorily from his structure.

He is regarded wearily. “Nobody tries to rise against me anymore,” is his way of answering, “I have demonstrated plenty of examples as to why it’s in their favor to follow me.” He sharply points forward, insisting Eddie continue on.

Light fixtures dot the walls in small intervals, so frequent that Eddie has to squint before he can adjust to such unusual opulence. He forces himself not to shrivel up when they come upon the open mouth of the male ward, the simple metal plating on the wall the last stop before the hall opens up into his old place of residence. He slinks behind Chris, telling himself it’s a practical decision, not a cowardly one.

In one fluid motion, Chris thrusts the door open and sends them into the ward, Eddie gone raw and vulnerable.

It does not look like home. Even the layout seems different.

The cells, always having been perfectly lined up and organized, are now abandoned. Their bars are bent in directions that either block the locks or make them useless, probably to ensure that even a patient with a trigger-finger and a set of keys won’t have control over their freedom anymore. The beds are dressed, however. Eddie supposes we all like sleeping in a familiar, squishy place.

“I use Unit C for our supplies,” Chris informs, keeping at a steady pace onward. “Most of the patients live in A, B, and E. Some of the workers sleep here when they finish for the night.” He contemplates over whether he wants to disclose something, but then does. “Prior staff are imprisoned in block D.”

Eddie honestly can’t remember which one of these beds used to be his.

“Do you torture them?”

He doesn’t get an acknowledgement, so he tries again.

“How long have I been gone for?”

Chris opens the door to the recreational area, starting to count the months it’s been, but the number of eyes that fly up from their work (sorting clothing, bed linen, and towels) brings them to a stop. “He’s with me,” Chris grunts before the chattering starts, minute corroborations of “yeah, that’s Eddie,” and a hushed laugh; “this is great, already latched onto the one in charge,” “a thing for authority figures.”

A man with deep scar tissue notices them passively and goes back to folding medium and large jumpsuits into separate piles. “Who ya got, Chris?”

“Gluskin’s back with us,” he answers loudly so that they’ll all hear. “I want a clothing set now, then I need somebody to get going on ten liters of soup. We’ll need a bowl of it ready in about fifteen minutes; let’s meet in the kitchen shortly.” It’s apparently all the guidance they need, for nobody so much as turns to take a second look at Eddie as Chris receives a tan one-piece over his arm.

After a brief exchange, Eddie wanders into the showers, muscle memory leading him, and feels a constricted breath escape as he lets his old, ugly-toned suit drop around his feet. His body is crusted in filth, much of it his own, as he climbs into one of the communal showers and twists the knob. The drain is clogged under him, and there is no heat or steam or even soap, but as he uproots the grime with his fingernails, water streaming through his half-long hair and over his bare body, Eddie’s neurons are singing with purity, finally unclogged.

He shuts the water off, eager to get his feet out of the cold and damp puddle of dirt underneath him. Chris appears, offering a towel from the doorway. “Thank you,” Eddie speaks as he cradles it in his arms and presses it to his neck and face, sucking in the warm scent of detergent that lingers on it. This time, he cannot restrain an auditory gasp as he shudders against its soft touch.

“I’m sorry,” he laughs, actually _laughs_ , quickly mopping himself off so that he can slip into his new clothes. “I’m quite sensitive when it comes to textures.” Chris’ mouth emphatically turns up for some reason. “I was locked down there for- I don’t know, it didn’t feel like that long, but now it does.”

“When did you get cut?” Chris asks as Eddie pulls the jumpsuit over his shoulder and starts to zip it up.

“Recently.” Eddie glances down at the purple boil that protrudes from his arm before the clothing covers all of him.

“After we eat, I’ll take you to the medical wing.”

Chris is going to begin moving on again, but Eddie stays still, blinking. “Why are you being so kind?” he asks through tight lips.

“I told you.” He wonders at the self-aware nip in the man’s words. “You freed us.”

“And you feel guilty then, love?”

Turning, Chris finds Eddie’s face gravely scrutinizing him, his posture relaxed. “We all benefit from your sacrifice,” he states plainly. “Come along, the soup will be warm.”

-

His stomach is so full that he might be little more than a splatter of flesh in a couple minutes.

As he sits on the counter of the hospital room, however, he continues to gnaw on the end of a piece of bread. It’s rough and flaking, but it is so flavorful compared to the stale stench of rat meat. The soup poured from the asylum’s stock of canned food had carrots and beats and beans, and lots of other hearty things he barely looked at as he gulped them down. His body has not had access to real nutrition in ages. If he weren’t so happily bloated, endorphins screaming so loudly, he would be worried about the inevitable vomit.

Chris sorts through the cabinets, pulling out multiple bottles that he sets on the counter, next to the sink. Eddie has never been in this particular examination room before.

The man comes over to him with a roll of gauze and basic disinfectant cream. “We can put this on for now. I’m going to have to go to D block to ask about what antibiotics you need.”

Eddie shakes his head, taking another languid lick up the loaf of bread and chewing it into his cheek. “No need,” he dismisses through the mouthful, “Nurse Tanlon, if you remember her, basically taught me her entire degree’s worth. I can tell you what to do if you don’t mind doing it.” He flicks a lazy finger towards the stack of bottles. “I need to take the third from the right. I have to wash the wound, then use an antiseptic, then that bacterial cream, and finally we can dress it.”

Acceding, Chris moves to gather the materials. Eddie stops him with a hand in the air.

He swallows, setting the bread down. “I can treat you, too,” he offers, trying to play it off with a shrug. “Did you step on something?”

Chris’ eyes narrow. “Well,” Eddie goes on, attempting to prove less intrusive, “I just doubt that it’s a stamina issue that makes you have to stop so often. You’re big, but not in a glutinous, _unsightly_ way. I saw that there’s metal under your heel- do you want me to remove it?”

A sigh makes it way out of Chris. He turns back to the cabinet, grabbing substances that have labels matching Eddie’s words. He doesn’t answer for a while, only asking Eddie to pull the zipper down a little so he can slip his left arm out. It’s only when he wets a rag and returns to run it across Eddie’s skin that he begins to address the situation.

“I can’t have you telling anyone this, okay?” he gruffly warns, patting Eddie’s infected wound with warm water. They’ll have to drain the abscess too.

Wincing, Eddie nods. “Of course, darling, you’re the one at my weak spot,” he says faintly.

“How cruel were the doctors to you?”

Before he registers it, Chris has thrust a needle into the blister, and Eddie has to look away as the puss oozes out. “Nothing much worse than this,” he manages, but Chris has cleaned away the liquid already, and is now lifting Eddie’s arm to pour the antiseptic over the wound. He hisses at the pain. “You must have heard through the grapevine that I was very efficient, working my way through them. The small women in lipstick and earrings didn’t mind treating me well, especially if I paid for it in advance. The psychologists, however, were brutal when they went scraping about in my mind. But then, I’ve always been a whore for somebody.”

Smooth, cool cream is stroked into his injury, such a reward after the constant pain his arm has put him through.

Wrapping gauze around his bicep, Chris confides in response. “They didn’t do that kind of thing to me. They cared more about my size than anything, so they saw me like a bear who needed to be tranquilized. Despite my expectations, I got men tougher than me; tougher than I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.” He tightens the bandage and then leans back. “Dr. Morgan, my case manager as well, didn’t like how much I fought back. I was very out of my mind, and I’d tried to run away several times. The last time I did I attacked the guards, and when they inevitably caught me, she ordered a medical treatment for me so I couldn’t escape anymore.”

“What was it?” Eddie whispers, cautious.

“A handful of nails into either foot.” Chris barely controls his growl. “So that when I walk, not to mention run, it’s too painful to get very far at once.”

“Jesus.” A cold slime creeps through Eddie’s spirit, as if he’s the one who’s been injured. “You’re stupid for not getting that treated the second you usurped them,” he can’t help but snap.

Anger flares in the man’s features. “I haven’t had a damn second, Eddie. My control on these people is still tentative, as you’ve seen right up close. They’ll do whatever they want with nobody to fear. It’s the cooperation that’s keeping this all systematic, keeping us alive and okay. If I even let it show that I’m injured so significantly, they’ll overtake me in a hot minute.”

“I don’t care, you need to get them out of you.”

“You don’t know a fucking thing about what I need.” He smashes a fist on the table, bottles rattling.

Eddie strains against the countertop, knuckles clenched. Only the whisper of condolence keeps him from getting up and letting his fists fly. Instead, his voice becomes soft. “I can help you,” he says. “I can get them out and try to keep your wounds safe. If you leave them in, you’ll lose your feet.” He thinks, dropping his head. “Does anyone else know about the medical wing where I was?”

Fatigued, Chris shakes his head. “No, we probably would be okay… you want to help me?”

“Yes, yes, Jesus,” Eddie says again. “I can’t- that must be so fucking painful.”

“It is painful,” Chris mumbles. “And it’s painful knowing that they did it one at a time, one after another, making the decision to do it again and again.” Eddie’s eyes feel heavy.


	2. Gluskin Go Easy.

Eddie’s room is wrapped in tapestry. His bed has new sheets, even a pillow, and for Chris who lies on his back, there are towels beneath his ankles and spread on the floor to prepare for the bleeding. Eddie sits near the end of the bed on a chair they dragged in, pulling gloves over his hands. There are so many protrusions in the soles of Chris’ feet, the butt of the nails pushed deep from all the pressure that’s been put on them.

“Do you want me to do it fast?” he inquires, counting around five nails in each foot. “I can’t do it in one swoop, you need each to be treated immediately when it’s exposed to the air, but I can go as quick as I can. Just need to stop the bleeding before I can move on.”

“I’ll be fine,” Chris rumbles.

“Then I’m going to start.”

Eddie scoots the chair forward, carefully balancing the supplies on his lap and pressed between his legs. Chris appears deceptively calm, but Eddie can see the flush of humiliation that he himself is accustomed to concealing between his features. “You can tone down the vulnerability, sweetheart. Or tone it up. However, this-” he waves his hand in the air. “Isn’t very representative of you.”

With a mouth clamped on his words, Chris turns his head to the side. “Just do it, Gluskin,” he speaks with an emphasis on his lack of reactivity.

Before he’s given a chance to anticipate the fear, Eddie grabs hold of a nail’s edge and yanks it out in a clean, linear motion. Chris roars out, but grips the bed to restrain his movement enough so Eddie’s able to grab the strip of gauze from his lap, lathered in anti-bacterial cream, and press it firmly to the wound before more blood gushes from the disconcertingly wide-gaping hole.

“You okay?” he asks dryly, apologetic, eyes hovering up to meet Chris’ face.

Tears pour from the large male, inadvertently streaming down his face. “Fine,” he rasps, digging into the mattress with his fingers.

Eddie leans back to think, his outstretched hand keeping firm over the wound. “I know you will reject the idea, but I acquired a bottle of sedatives before we left.”

“No,” Chris snaps harshly.

“They’re swallowable, not injections, if that helps,” he hesitantly adds.

The man’s eyes are narrowed, as though he’s taken direct offense, and he doesn’t have to say it twice. “Just get the next one.”

Eddie makes sure he’s pressing adamantly against the first lesion before his fingers drift to another nail close by it. He gives Chris’ sole a quiet, sorry stroke, no longer able to utilize the method of surprise, and tears the second pin out.

Another bellow rocks the room, followed by Chris jamming his head between his arms in frenzied agony. Eddie has the wound compressed and exposed to the medicine while the older mouths at his forearm, biting a red mark of suction into his flesh to keep from swearing in Eddie’s direction.

The two nails drop into the corner of the room.

“You want me to just toss them?” he queries, worried about how Chris will react to seeing them painted in his blood.

“I want you to save each and every one so that if Morgan ever returns, I can crucify her with them,” he barks.

Despite himself, a chuckle slips from Eddie’s throat. “You need to go under, Chris.”

“I don’t,” is the insistence.

But the next question is jammed way too close to his original resoluteness. “What would happen if there was a problem in the hospital? I’d be unable to do anything.” He is asking for reassurance; a sign that he’s willingly leaning into the notion of forced unconsciousness.

“Darling, Chris.” Eddie swipes his chin with the glove that’s still clean. “What do you honestly think you could do in this state, eyes closed or otherwise?”

Chris chews over this. “Just do it as fast as you can so that it has every possible second it needs to heal.” It comes out surprisingly like a beg, which Eddie knows is a substitute for _please make sure the peak of the pain is while I’m down so that I don’t have to be awake to feel it._ Eddie understands. He wishes that he would’ve been knocked out himself, at least the first couple of times he was hurt this badly.

“I’m gonna wrap you up and get it for you, so you don’t have to move,” he informs, then gets to work bunching the gauze thickly against the bloody cavities. He rolls a thinner piece around the width of Chris’ foot, which is tied to hold the stopper in place. “Okay.” He wants to be extensively communicative, to let Chris know everything he should expect- also, he’s afraid of being kicked in the face. He gets out of the way of those limbs, scraping the chair back and crossing the room.

Eddie edges the door of his dresser open just enough for the breadth of his hand to fit, feeling past the collection of tools with sharp edges, pilfered from the hospital wing. The bottle is rattling in his hand and the drawer closed before the light can so much as wink at the silver weapons. He turns around, holding it with purposefully penitent eyes. “Try three,” he suggests, “you’re big, you’ll need it.”

Pliant, Chris nods, sweat and tears mixing in his pores.

With Chris opening his mouth willingly, Eddie twists the top and counts three capsules into his palm. He helps Chris lean his head back so that they can be slipped under his tongue, and the moment that he watches Chris’ throat bob, taking them down, Eddie has to turn away to smile. He grabs the chair and drags it over to the side of the bed, so that he can sit in close proximity as his patient waits for the drowsiness to take him.

Eddie folds his hands patiently, maintaining a respectful silence.

“Did Dr. Morgan ever have sex with you?” Chris audibly wonders.

The younger puts his head up. “Hah. No,” he truthfully responds, cracking a set of knuckles. “No humanity to be gained from that bitch, with or without bribery.”

“It wasn’t bribery, that’s not… applicable,” Chris speaks lightly, profile pressing into the pillow. “Did male nurses ever? I’m- just trying to figure out what it was like for you.”

Eddies rolls over a couple of possible answers. “The male staff snarl in disgust and roll their eyes right up until the moment they don’t.”

Chris is looking up at him, some specific kind of sorrowful mischief in his expression. “I wouldn’t roll my eyes.”

Eddie scoffs loudly. “My body is a temple; I shall not want.”

“Perhaps you were plentiful, but I don’t think it was okay.”

“I don’t think it was okay for them to put nails in your fucking feet,” Eddie counters, “Which, by the way, may become a new breed of normal after a bit of adjustment but will never adequately heal. At least my body has made a full recovery.”

“Your body,” Chris echoes. “Okay.”

“Ah, I don’t need you to pity me. My soul is just as fine and untainted as ever, if you’re suggesting that that’s what sustained the damage.” His words have a definite flame of irritation, but he is mostly trying to talk Chris to sleep.

“They were supposed to be helping you, not making you _sicker_.”

Eddie’s gaze cuts. “Why do you care?”

“I dunno, why do you care about my feet?”

“Um, probably because I’ll be slaughtered without you.”

Chris’ eyes come open. “They evaluate you so harshly for doing what you need to get through this alive.”

The man’s eyelashes are fucking long, Eddie sees now that Chris can hardly keep them up. They’re blonde, and camouflage into his pale skin, but yeah, they’re long.

“I think teaming up over a mutual problem is something that keeps _them_ alive,” he idly murmurs.

“Pack mentality is shit.”

“I guess. I’d like a pack of my own. A troop to guard my back.” He cocks his head. “Are we talking about my pain in order for you to be distracted from yours, by the way?”

Instead of a sharp quip, Chris earnestly looks Eddie up and down. “Are you in pain?”

Eddie flinches. “Are your emotional filters asleep?”

His head droops even further, the pills beginning to lower his functioning. “Sorry, I can’t keep up right now,” Chris mumbles into the pillow, a string of drool spilling from his mouth.

“That’s good,” Eddie whispers.

He waits until he hears soft snores escape before he bends down toward Chris’ face and speaks softly, lulling him with gentle phrases. “Chris,” he eventually speaks, gaining a groggy response of eyes rolling up, showing bloodshot whites. “Shh,” he hushes, then presses his fingers to the man’s lips. “You don’t have to get up, but take this.” The pill slides back into Chris’ cheek, whether to be swallowed or slowly dissolved, it doesn’t matter.

Mouth pursed, Eddie lifts his hand thoughtfully, letting it hover before he finally lays a caress on the back of Chris’ neck, smoothing his nearly-nonexistent hairline. “Good boy,” he purrs under his breath, then feeds another capsule through the man’s lips.

“One more,” he lovingly encourages the sleeping male.

He keeps Chris’ head held up long enough for him to believe that the sedatives have been ingested before making sure the male is comfortable and returning to his drawer. The snores are loud, spit choked on and saliva gurgled. Eddie falls in step with those noises as he slides it open, shifting through knives.

He presses the tip of his fingers against curved iron, like small pokers, and even a hook on chains, which exists for God knows what. Eddie settles on a thin, long knife, holding it in the light and gently running its edge across his palm, feeling its cold bite on his skin. His head tilts when he steps forward, trying to level with Chris, who slumbers on, twitching.

Stroking the knife, Eddie pulls his lip between his teeth. He will cut Chris’ skin from the shoulders down, doing his best to strip him in one piece. A solid slab of flesh will do to serve him, as long as it is long and billowing and he can wear it around his shoulders like a cape. They will all fear him; he is the one who is cunning enough to kill their leader, and deranged enough to pull on another man’s skin. He will run things from now on.

_Do it._

The voice comes from behind, blowing gently on Eddie’s shoulder. He narrows his eyes. “Why?” he asks, stepping forward with his attention on Chris’ collar bones.

_We miss you._

Eddie’s shoulders slump in annoyance. “So?” He whips around but they are not showing their faces today.

 _When you get killed, you’ll be with us again._ A pair of hands come up to grip his cheeks, curling around his jaw. _Following your daddy to prison; they’ll hang you like they did me. And then you’ll be with me again._

Eddie makes his way towards Chris in the silence, but the voice comes again, scraping against his brain before he can lower the knife.

 _You never_ think, _Eddie. When he dies they aren’t going to respect you. They will be angry at you. There will be a power vacuum and they will all try to fill it. They will cut off_ your _skin and pour salt inside you to show each other how powerful they are. You need a man’s protection, Eddie. You’re a Gluskin. You’re my pretty boy._

The knife clatters to the ground.

He whirls around and lunges for his tormentors, not stopping when empty air responds. He slams into the wall and claws at it, screaming around teeth that scrape against the plaster. “Come back now,” he demands loudly, Chris sleeping on behind him, scratching at the surface. “Stop watching me. This is my special place.”

A groan is uttered from the bed.

Eddie stops, turning to find Chris’ eyes on him. The man does not move, cannot speak, but the blueness of his irises watch Eddie through fighting eyelids. Eddie does not know what he is trying to convey. Chris eventually loses his hold, plummeting back into unconsciousness.

The heaving breaths that he takes in sound quiet now that the commotion in his mind his drained away. Eddie grips his head in a stabilizing fist and staggers back over to the bed.

He tears the nails out fast, letting them scatter to the floor. He does not do a careful job of tending the wounds, but the basics are there, and he does tie each foot into a nice, white bow to hold it all together.

Then he stoops to retrieve his knife and exits the room.

-

Eddie can barely look at Chris when he returns, gone long enough for Chris to have grown more than semi-aware. He’s bathed in red.

“What the fuck,” he hears the man breathe, propped up on his elbows and twisting like he’s too numb to feel anything. Even the shock barely makes it to his eyes.

Swiping away the blood pooling around his temples, Eddie growls warningly, slamming the knife on the dresser. “You’re fixed,” he sneers, “But I had to get out and kill for it or it was gonna be you.”

Chris is a blur, jumping off the bed to grab at Eddie’s collar, but as soon as he’s on his feet he yelps in pain and collapses back into the bed, howling.

Eddie lets out a cruel laugh.

“What did you do?!”

“I took back what was mine,” comes the sentence ripped from his throat, Eddie’s neck straining. “They remember my face but they aren’t a mass to me, not obscured in the pack, I know all of them by their faces and I will tear the apologies from them one by one, or I will tear their intestines out to compensate.”

He has come so close that Chris only has to reach out and grab him, pulling him down by the top of his jumpsuit.

“How dare you?” the leader shouts at him, knuckles twisting the fabric so that Eddie can’t wrench himself out. “I made a sacrifice for you but I cannot be associated with somebody who kills my people.” Eddie stares defiantly at him, grinding his teeth.

“You. Owe. Me.”

He is thrown dismissively to the floor, Chris tossing him away in a gesture of repugnance. “I owe you shit. I can’t do this again.” He turns away.

“I gave you your freedom!” he reminds erratically. “I stopped you from having to step on ten blades every time put your foot down.”

Chris pulls off the blanket, rocking onto the balls of his feet and then forcing himself to push onto them. His cry is suppressed, but Eddie sees the suffering in his eyes as he takes a few stilted steps on his new feet. “You stay away and I won’t have you killed. I can’t do this. Nothing changes.”

Eddie watches Chris stretch another joint, slam it down, and gasp. It is a slow process, something that he hasn’t considered. Chris is so overpowering, so omnipresent, that it doesn’t seem like he should be forced to bend to the pure sensory data of his body.

There is a small birth mark on his lower ankle.

Before Eddie can restrain himself- just lie back and smirk at the pitifulness of it all, he has let out a strained, “Wait a second.”

A shatter in his ribs when Chris turns instantly to him.

“Do I…?” Eddie stares, air circulating so shallowly through his shaking lungs. “Do I _know_ you?”

Chris freezes.

He doesn’t move, just seems to grapple for something to say. “Why would you ask me that?” Eddie is caught off guard by how quickly Chris has disregarded the pain, turning on his heels and returning to the center of the room at twice the speed he left.

“You clearly know _me_.” Eddie folds his legs and sits taller, angling his neck to meet Chris’ gaze.

“I do know you,” Chris softly admits.

“How?” It is not a nice question; it’s sharp, demanding.

All of his joints creaking, Chris lowers himself to the floor and basically falls the rest of the way down, tumbling next to Eddie and positioning his feet so that their tender bottoms don’t touch the ground anymore. He wears the sting of the wounds on his expression, but begins looking so deeply at Eddie that his features become harder to read. Eddie feels uncomfortable, self-consciously shifting into himself.

“Do you remember writing to me?” he begins.

Eddie’s head cocks. “What? When?”

“You- uh.” Chris lets his face fall into his hands, rubbing at his skin. “Sorry, this is hard. When you were first brought here, and you still had privileges, you got a letter across that they must have not read through because you wrote of all the horrendous things they were doing to you- cutting into your head, shocking you, forcing you to watch stressful clips like footage of the bombs and then _weaponizing_ the information about what was triggering enough to drive you insane.” Eddie doesn’t see tears on Chris’ face when he lifts his head, but he sort of hears them promised in the tone. “They would tell you that you could have a break from it as long as you used the hour to fuck them instead. You said you always hoped you’d get that option.”

Eddie remains quiet. “I don’t understand.”

“I know,” whispers Chris, words trying at comfort. “You didn’t write to me specifically. Our General got it and ripped it up, but I’d already read it because I’d been waiting to hear from you every day.”

A blankness on his face, Eddie tries to follow along with the story, but the words don’t click into place. The terminology doesn’t even register familiarity. His recognition is as ruined as he speculated.

“It was awful,” Chris goes on, talking at the floor, “One night you and I were in our tent and we heard an explosion. We both grabbed our guns and ran out to see what was happening, and I think you would have run into it if I didn’t hold you back. It was like you lost your mind for a minute, and then when we found out it was one of our own soldiers who did it, I don’t know, Eddie… You disappeared and killed so many of them, you were babbling, and when they started looking into you even more, they found so much. You had so much blood in your apartment. I was scared- for you, _of_ you. They sent you here and I decided to never see you again.”

Chris grinds his teeth, kneading at the corner of his eye. “But then that letter came, and our captain refused to help you; he said you _deserved_ it. And I understood that urge to kill; I knew I had to help you. I could understand. I could learn to live with that side of you.” He cannot control his output now, desperately needing to tell somebody, tell _Eddie_ , all of this that he’s been forced to be silent about.

“I feigned trauma-related homicidal tendencies and so they admitted me, but no one would tell me about you, and once I was in Unit D, I was locked in forever. I didn’t get how cruel they were until they started doing it to me; sedating me when I threatened to tell everyone about them, mutilating me when I got good at fighting back in small ways. I started making noise to the younger counsellors; they launched a whole investigation to bring you up from the female’s ward but no one could ever find you. I never had any proof that you were even ever here at all. I’m probably the fucking reason they hid you down there at all, so I’d never see your face and start causing real trouble. Even after we took all the doctors into custody, I couldn’t find you. I tore up the blocks asking about you, finding out about your history. I thought they killed you and dumped you. I thought you were gone.” He begins to weep in earnest, shielding his eyes with his arm. “I suppose you are, in a way. I’m sorry for confusing you.”

With careful movements, Eddie tries to let the words sink in in a way that will make sense to him. He fumbles. “We were in the… army? Together?”

“We were infantry. I think we always carefully assumed that the other could die at any time, but I couldn’t just leave you here.”

“Why would you ever come here willingly; for anyone?” As if that is the hardest to believe- and it probably is.

“I needed to save you, you are my friend.”

Eddie is sad as he looks from Chris’ wounded feet, up to his nervous face. “Did you love me?”

Chris shoves against Eddie’s shoulder, but there is no strength behind it. “I’m not addressing that.”

“Why?”

“I barely know you. I barely _knew_ you, except that I knew you to be a rare gleam of light in such a violent place.”

There is no sound as Eddie takes this in. It’s too much to process. Suddenly laughter hits the walls. “You’ve been massively screwed if you’ve been looking at me for an escape from violence, then, haven’t you?”

Chris stares at the blood, then he starts to laugh as well. “It’s fine. Thanks. For tending to the nails.”

Eddie is about to accept the gratitude when one of the brothers from the before comes skidding by the room, a look of wild concern on his face. He can’t help but shrink behind Chris at the sight of him. “You’re here! My God. Thank God. Things have gone to shit,” he pants, holding onto the edge of the door. “You have to come.”

-

“Get this off,” Chris demands, ripping at the collar of Eddie’s jumpsuit.

“I don’t have anything else!” he protests, running his hands down the wet, sticky layer of fabric that hair strands and bits of dislodged skin cling to. He feels the panicked race of his heart push against his ribs, trying to flip him inside-out so that his guts and guilt will be free to play with.

Chris huffs in frustration, his face red with effort. It’s clear that he’s on his feet and moving because the fearful adrenaline outweighs his pain for the moment, but it will transform into sharp stalks of agony as soon as- if, things get settled. “I don’t care,” he rasps as traces of it leak through, “Get it off and hope to God that your neck is the only part of your skin with blood on it.”

While Eddie unzips the jumpsuit to his feet, Chris rubs roughly at Eddie’s collar, trying to clean the redness as much as he can. There is no time, so they’re out the door unfinished, one hobbling and the other naked, catching up to the twin who races ahead as a torch-slinging guide. Any remainder of the playful violence Eddie met before has been exchanged for tense consternation.

“Tell me,” Chris implores.

As they turn the stairwell corners, the patient’s voice echoes along the banisters. “The nurses are out, they’re weak. probably dying, but everyone’s confused and angry. Harris is dead; somebody got the keys off his body and let them free and then it went shit. There’s no one running the area anymore.”

Eddie catches the accusation when Chris meets his eye around the corner, shame and bitterness on his face. He doesn’t know _who_ he killed. He barely remembers what they might have looked like, let alone if they had keys in their pocket.

It’s not immediately obvious that anything has shambled, at least not from the appearance of the main quarters. Suddenly, a flash in his brain starts to separate one cell from the next, until a single cage remains consciously visible. He stops to stare at his old bed but Chris’ voice is a stronger tether, forcing him on.

Eddie snatches a jumpsuit when they pass the packing station. He stumbles over himself, shoving his feet and hands into the fabric while trying to secure the latch around his waist. He manages his last arm into the sleeve and has pulled the zipper to his chin, head down so that he doesn’t initially see the havoc matching the yelling from the next room. They’ve already flown through the door by the time he gazes up into the thrust of lunacy.

The nurses are on the floor, threatless, but prior prisoners crowd around their malnourished bodies with enraged intent, constructing vicious propositions that they’ve probably been holding onto since they were the ones being poked around by these same employees. Eddie understands that. The entropy of the situation barely phases his ability to look coldly on at the faces of men and women he probably knows. Then he realizes that the patients are now looking coldly on _him_.

He is just the same as the doctors, to them.

“What’s happened?” Chris bellows as he steps forward, shaking their attention away. A man in a ruddy white coat tries to squirm away while they’re distracted, but a foot comes down his sternum to keep his steady.

A man with long hair snarls his way. “Your fucking _friend_ killed our gatekeeper to get his real alliances out. We rounded them, had to kill most, and one woman got away.” Eddie holds his head up with an assumption that is so arrogant it makes Chris turn away in confliction.

“Is anyone tracking her?”

“Probably everyone,” he snorts, “Even if she knew her way, there’s enough groups that her only way free would be to tuck into a sewer pipe and wait out starvation. But now these guys think they can have the same escape and they’re really giving me a headache.”

It’s not just them.

The patients are uncontrollable, snapped by the sudden loss of structure, and it’s hard to hear the area’s leader over the sounds of them rallying for Chris to do what they demand. They shove each other into walls and over tables, thrashing at the cell bars in the back of the room.

“Let them free,” says a grinning face, the male rocking himself on the floor. “I wanna watch what happens.”

“We need them,” counters the man above him, smacking him on the scalp. “We need their knowledge.”

A laugh. “Fuck we do,” the area’s leader speaks up, turning. “We know all they got. They’re a burden at this point. Just kill them and let me worry about something better.”

“Do you want that?” Chris asks seriously.

The crowd is a flurry of mixed panic and excitement; everybody is suddenly focused on their leader, looking at him to adhere to their needs. One even swings at anybody who says the opposite of him, elbowing the protestors to the ground.

And Eddie, still safely at Chris’ back, peers through the animated bodies at the cluster of both genders on the floor, who have looped their pale arms together as if an act of spiritual defiant- not one of comfort, but as if to say, _it’s still us and they’re them- we are not them._

He remembers the face of the girl in the middle, her auburn hair grown down with her dark roots gathered about her face.

He remembers her patting his head and telling him he was a pretty boy.

Chris stands still, trying to number out what he hears the people asking for, but through the clutter of chaos comes a small voice, quieter than anyone else can hear. “Kill them all,” Eddie whispers. He balls his fist.

Chris lunges.

It’s impossible to track his body as it swiftly bashes through the crowd, nails and post-crucifixions forgotten. He is a swirl of flesh that gives way to an eruption of yet more flesh, and blood that sprays as Eddie realizes he is ripping an arm from its socket. The doctors scream as their friend splatters their faces, and then Eddie’s attention goes to Chris lifting the writhing woman in the air and taking her other arm off in one fluid yank. Her screams send a scatter of pleasure through him, so great he almost loses himself. Then there is clarity. Chris is looking him in the eyes as the nurse pours from both sides, holding this woman on display for him, showing what he has made for Eddie- and without bothering to watch what he’s doing, he bunches his fingers into her neck and tears the skin from her jugular to her spine, thick fingers dripping with gore. He maintains the eye contact as he throws her down, then finally turns to stomp his foot down on one of the males’ ribs and drag another up by her hair.

There is delight and horror in the room; Eddie understands that Chris has just split the asylum down the middle. Not all of his followers are appeased anymore. A lot of them glance his way with eyes narrowed to slivers, but no one makes a move. Finally, when Chris is raking his fist harshly against the last living nurse, somebody yells out, “Gluskin next.”

Eddie bares his teeth, arms flared to either side so he can hold his ground. He doesn’t feel particularly vulnerable to them, because he still identifies himself as equal to them- _better._

“Kill Gluskin,” another roars, rushing into the light to show his veins, purposefully pushing against the skin, which bulge along the curved arm he raises to incite Chris’ machinery.

“Kill Gluskin _now,_ ” comes the scream at Chris’ hesitancy

Chris is bathed, his pores glistening with red oil. The thick carnage rolls down his knuckles, and he looks like a different person with his teeth drawn back into an analyzing grimace. Eddie has absolutely no memory of seeing him outside these walls. He remembers that time as a soft statue of women hammered together in his basement. If he thinks hard enough, he can imagine Chris with dog tags lying on his collar bone so hard that it almost feels like a memory. The man raises his bloody arm to silence the rabble.

Nobody here is stupid. They see it for what it is: an act of defiance for the public will.

The swam moves fast, covering Chris.

Patients claw up his body, climbing him and swiping at his eyes. Eddie’s instinct snaps into place. He races forth, tearing the men from Chris’ body and holding them to the ground, but it’s unneeded. Chris ably shakes them away, picking them off him and cleaving them viciously wherever his hands meet their bodies. For every one that races up to pull him to the ground with their collected weight, Chris yells back and reduces another two to piles of flesh.

Eddie watches with wet eyes, right before they smother him.

The scene is replaced by fat darkness, filled with the sensation of bruises exploding over his figure. They have personal intentions for retribution as they swing at him, stuffing him between the floor and their bodies. A knife snaps open and is thrust into his inner thigh, sending his vision to howling red. He hears himself beg on the underside of a sob.

A hand comes and yanks him out of the mass, hoisting him high into the air like the woman preceding him.

Chris is offering him up. No one moves anymore- it’s quiet. The ground is wet with corpses, both us and them.

“How do you want me to kill him?” he rumbles, scanning his eyes across the crowd. Eddie grasps at the tight strain of the fisted jumpsuit around his neck, the throbbing of his upper body transitioning into the sharp stab he feels in his leg.

His mind is aware of it before he consciously is, because none of the pasty tears crumbling down his cheeks are from the pain. He has remembered a time when Chris put him up on his shoulders, taking him up a hill to see the night unclouded by the dust of the desert.

Now his is dangling, this gesture so similar but so symbolical opposite. For emphasis, Chris thrusts him higher. “How do you want it?” he repeats, voice booming.

“Burn him!”

There is a wolfish smile on the sitting patient’s face as he purrs, “Scalp him.”

“Burn him from the hair down.”

Eddie digs his nails into the surface of Chris’ hands, but they just twist tighter around the fabric he is hanging by. He has started to choke.

Eddie manages to get his voice through the asphyxiating saliva pooled in his trachea. “Why don’t- scalpel under nails- whipping rod-”

The outrage is so fucking beautiful, he would smile if he could. He knows he’s gone too far, but he would keep going if he had the chance. Chris tosses him over his shoulder and he gasps as his breastbone hits the hard cartilage, breath coming gushing back into his lungs.

“Meet me at my room,” Chris speaks dispassionately, “We’ll be done in an hour. Bring whatever you want. I want him first, then you can have him to yourself.”

Eddie hangs brokenly as Chris hauls him away, leading him through corridors he’s never seen before, encountering faces that he knows awfully well, but cannot perseverate on because his eyelids don’t stay open long enough to truly contemplate any specific person.

The feeling of a mattress bouncing beneath him draws him awake again, and he looks up to see Chris jamming a wooden chair under a doorknob. “Okay, we have to go fast,” Chris whispers urgently. “Can you move?” Eddie blinks and lifts his neck up, looking about the room. Chris’ room is dim, a small flame burning inside a glass class on his dresser. It seems like him, inside here. It’s small, probably a janitorial closet, but it doesn’t feel like prison anymore.

“Am I not dying now?” Eddie murmurs, hurt.

“Not if we go fast,” Chris repeats, bending down under the bed, where there’s a sound like wood creaking.

Eddie forces himself to swing his body to the side and plant his feet on the floor. He tries to stand up and crumples down, the stab wound in his thigh crippling him. But from this angle, he sees the trap door gaping beneath Chris’ bed. He thinks about Chris’ feet and somehow it’s enough motivation to get him back up.

“Where does it go?”

“One floor below. Like I said, we need to move. We’ll go to where there aren’t any assigned areas and hope that we aren’t being hunted that far out. I don’t know what’s going to happen once they don’t have a leader.”

Eddie is small enough to slither beneath the bed and hook his legs against the edge of the hole enough for him to pull himself through it. Chris is lifting the bed up so that he can accommodate his size as Eddie lets himself be swallowed into the trap door, plummeting a few feet and onto the ground below, which hits him hard. Chris lands beside him, arched back so that he won’t land on his healing feet.

The corridor is empty and silent, poorly lit but manageable. They both need a second to recover, Chris heaving and Eddie gazing up at the hole above his head.

“I need to go to my room,” he realizes suddenly.

“Wh- we _can’t_.” Chris makes himself stand, holding a out hand for Eddie to grab.

“I have to, Chris.” He can’t stop his words from shaking. “They can’t have what’s in there. Nobody can have that, never again, I need to get it.” He buries his face into his hands. “After what I did to them, they will come and destroy me. Please.”

Chris groans, then lifts Eddie into his arms and starts to speed down the hallway. “If it isn’t something good, then I’m feeding you to them.”

-

Eddie stuffs every scrap of paper he sees into the folder and then lets Chris gather him back up so that they are not hindered by Eddie’s speed. They descend many levels, crashing through a lot of locked doors that lead into wings Eddie never even knew existed. Deeper is better, Chris informs him, because down is where all the torture happened and only the psychotic dwell there. They’re preferential at the moment, when the other choice is a lucid mob.

They don’t decide to take a break as much as Chris crashes to the floor in exhaustion, wailing from the pain in his feet. Eddie tumbles out of Chris’ hold, his entire body aching. He checks that the contents of the folder aren’t out before he looks to the other, sprawled on the ground beside him.

“You can sleep,” he offers feebly, crawling forward to Chris, who is clutching his fists by his head and biting into his knuckles. It’s very dingy down here, all stone and filth. It is certainly dungeon-esque, the irregular walls jutting out over the concrete floor. Eddie dares to gently move Chris’ head from the floor and onto his good thigh, giving him somewhere soft to rest. Enough has been done for him already.

“Do they really hate you because the doctors liked you…?” he hears Chris utter from below him, eyes pointed feebly to meet Eddie’s.

He can’t help but laugh. “No,” he mumbles, turning his head. “Well- I don’t want to talk about it.”

Chris nods, rubbing the space between his eyes. They stay stoic for a while, bodies returning to their background state of humming with discomfort, but Eddie notices Chris does not once hold his eyes closed. The man is sticky with blood, his face painted in tribal intricacies. “Hey-” Eddie lowers his voice, though the walls are solid enough to contain his words. Still, he is afraid of the rats crawling through the beams, as if they might recognize him by his voice. “Can you get up for a couple more minutes? You’re going to be sick if you fester too long in that sewage.”

“I’ve never been down here,” Chris admits, “I don’t know what there is; if there even is a torture chamber like they say.”

Eddie’s chuckle is light. He draws up his knees, forcing Chris to take his head away and rise with him, their two silken bodies in such a harsh place. “It’s not a chamber, really. It’s very sterile and regular, and there are four of them if I remember right. You’re lucky they never took you; either you weren’t here long enough, or they thought it wouldn’t break you, just become fuel…” He hums in memory, then gets to his feet, grabbing the file. “We’re very close and there will be something to wash you with.”

“What is the torture’s purpose?” Chris asks, probably rhetorically, his knees barely conceding to the instructions he’s giving his muscles. He has to stumble to keep up with Eddie’s competent pace through the dark stone fixtures.

“Amusement,” he lilts neutrally. The torture was probably implemented for experimenting with pain and stress while teaching discipline, but the secondhand staff pleasure did not remain hidden. He saw that even the daintiest, most feminine of wrists would wield a whip if told to. Women, he found, rather enjoy submitting a group that could be considered lesser than them, when given the chance.

Modern, fluorescent lighting appears in the distance, met with the metal rails that line the rock walls. Eddie is right in knowing nobody will be down here, not _even_ the psychotic. The only reason he himself does not turn and run is because he’s not haunted the same way as the rest of them. His strife is bearable because he knows he was nothing other than himself when he experienced it.

“Okay, this way,” he guides the older, a palm pressed to his low wound. He’ll be able to bandage it up, maybe finally find the means to redress Chris too. He thoughtlessly runs his other hand along the bracing metal bar that indicates they are close, his folder tucked securely beneath his arm like a weightless burden.

If it were some months in the past, patients would be clutching to this bar so they could support themselves despite their new lacerations. You didn’t get wheeled back; you were expected to walk.

Eddie halts before they reach the first discipline room, turning behind him. “If you suddenly remember being here before, we can leave,” he informs firmly, not unselfishly. Memories do not always want to be found, but will peak up and get caught when they are instigated by another sense in the body. Eddie himself feels that he’s done this- been here, gone in, only days ago.

The knob turns familiarly in his fingers.

Craning over his shoulder, Chris follows into the small block of walls, steel layered in inches over almost every surface. Nothing with personality is immediately visible, just counters that run the perimeter of the room, cabinets beneath, and a single gurney with heavy straps, rolled near to the built-in sink. The area is dim with grayness, but it’s Eddie’s memory that turns it vivacious.

“How… often were you down here?” The elder’s eyes trace the room, seeming to read the suffering that’s been absorbed inside.

“Me?” Eddie pivots himself towards the sink, pleased when the faucet releases cold water, only slightly tinged by rust. He lays his folder aside. “I guess a lot,” he recounts with his hands under the stream, splashing it onto his face, which he thoroughly savors before directing the flow of water to the shower nozzle attached to the appliance. He picks it up from inside the sink. “Come here.”

With eyes concerned, Chris heeds and defers to let Eddie grasp his neck, gently angling him down. The younger runs the cool liquid down Chris’ scalp, behind his ears, clearing away the clotted blood with scrubbing hands. “Don’t have to feel particularly bad for me,” he shrugs, handing the hose off so that Chris can begin washing his body down. Eddie wanders to the parallel side of the room.

He toys with the knobs on one of the drawers, then finally glides it open. “You know how I said the nurses taught me their trade, the unspoken reward for my unofficial service?” He dips his fingers inside and runs them over the smooth, wooden curve of a polished handle that morphs into gorgeously braided leather, as red as a broken patch of flesh. He takes it into his hands and presses it onto the countertop, moving on to the next cabinet to give breath to its metal contents, hooked ends lambent.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie sees his father strapped into pushcart, a grisly grin splitting his cheeks while he strains dramatically against the restraints. There’s whispering inside his head, telling him to come forward, to punish him for being so bad.

Chris eyes the weapon through the sink water dripping down his forehead. “What the Hell did they teach you to do _here_?”

Gesturing towards the gurney, now empty and silent, Eddie offers a sardonic smile. “Darling, I’ll show you.”

Blood, watery and red, drips down Chris’ naked body. He is almost clean, so Eddie sets about to remember where the necessary first (or, second) aid is kept.

“Did you help torture patients?” It isn’t an accusing tone, but Eddie lifts his shoulders in exasperatedly feigned indifference, protecting himself from scrutiny.

“Dr. Morgan said it was healthy for me to regain my control,” he drawls, pulling medical supplies from a high cabinet. “I mean, it was that or be on the other side of the rod. They think they get all the victimization, like I revoked mine. They think I had it easy, because they remember the lashes on their back, but never _mine_. I suffered for this position.” His voice snaps wickedly, a collage of men in the gurney being pierced in calculated places, notches in their tongues and beneath their nails, all in the name of catharsis. “Just because I paid with my flesh in different ways.”

Afterwards, they settle down for the night a healthy distance away from the torture rooms, their injuries neatly tended to, and Eddie’s supply of pornography tucked beneath a whip and knife that he gathered for safety.

“What were we like in the army?” Eddie asks, scoffing at the thought of somebody like him ever being in that role. He lets Chris’ head rest on his lap again, Eddie supported upright by the wall pressed to his back. He tries to not reposition too frequently, lest Chris interpret his unease and refuse to be given this privilege.

“Uh-” Chris thinks, half asleep. “Kinda muscular- less fat. Hard inside and out. Compassionate but ready to throw anyone into a tank if you had to.”

“Me or you?”

He yawns. “Both of us. It was a different time. We were pretty rough with one another but we preferred it that way. Now I’m fucking soft, even though I’m apparently dissociate enough to rip a head from its spine without a second thought.” There is distaste in his sentence, though at which part, Eddie doesn’t know. The tone shifts. “How did you remember me?”

Eddie’s voice is soft. “Your birthmark.”

“What does it remind you of?”

He doesn’t think on that for long. “A padlock.” This registers, because Chris nods like he’s heard that before. “What’s your last name?” he inquires.

Chris smiles against his leg. “Walker.”

“That makes no sense, you’re a fucking cripple.

His feet are comfortable in their wrapping, so he doesn’t mind laughing.

Eddie speaks again. “Do you care that I slaughter my women?”

Clearing his throat, Eddie feels Chris’ jugular bob against his outer thigh. “Not really. Do you care that I probably slaughtered any who were left over today?”

“It was beautiful,” Eddie barely confesses. “Did we kill a lot of people at war?”

“A lot,” Chris agrees. “It wasn’t as hard to believe this place exists, after being in Afghanistan. The world was already deconstructed for me there; humanity no longer an assumption, just a sanction.”

“Do I look good in camouflage?”

Laughing, Chris strokes a thoughtful set of fingers along Eddie’s bare foot. “Not as good as I do. My overweight, constantly annoyed body was always meant to be molded by rigid discipline and a tendency to ignore potential morals for the sake of the job. Not sure why you joined though. You’re too damn petty.”

A sigh breaks loose. “Whoever I was at that time isn’t here now. I remember being a child, and I remember being here. Nothing between those times lasted.”

Chris looks at him pointedly. “I don’t expect you to be anybody.”

“You probably expect me to be _somebody._ ” He chews on his thoughts. “I probably joined because that’s what my uncle did. I expect it was appealing, the idea of getting to be as careless and hard as he. I couldn’t stop killing them, but it didn’t sit well. I couldn’t control it, didn’t want to stop myself, but it made me sick. I don’t know. I can guess but I won’t ever know.”

“Kinda glad you ended up there, whatever reason,” Chris intones.

“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but you would. At least now you have somebody.”

He grits his teeth. “I don’t deserve somebody.”

Chris’ hand squeezes the sensitive edge of Eddie’s foot. “I don’t give a fuck what you think, Gluskin. I follow orders and you’re the one in command now.”

“ _That_ expectation is unfair.” The smaller considers him with cold eyes, raking his gaze over Chris’ weathered body, strong in impulse but battered in repose. “If you need orders, try to sleep, okay? We’ll get further tomorrow, and as superstitious as we all are, they’ll probably think to find me here. We need to go somewhere more obscure. It’s not just me they’ll want now.”

“I agree.” The large male shifts onto his back, facing the ceiling. “It felt horrific to pretend I was offering you to them. I felt like I was going to do it, too, just throw you back in and let them finish tearing you up with their teeth. The stupor of the crowd calls to me louder than any inner guide I apparently don’t have.” He gauges Eddie’s reaction. “I couldn’t be their leader anymore. I only came to get you back, and at some point it turned into a task of physically endurance. I found a secondary purpose and I just took it because I didn’t have anything else- but I would have lost myself completely had I let myself retain that false power.”

“Wasn’t false,” Eddie quickly amends, “You’re dominant over all of them. Even with their bodies combined, they couldn’t bring you down.”

Chris smiles sadly. “That’s what’s really scary, Eddie.”

After a period of silence, Eddie hears the other snore, body curled up and everything from his head to the lower part of his shoulders resting on the younger, using him as a pillow. Eddie finally rolls his shoulders against the wall and slumps down slightly. He enjoys the solid feeling behind him; he will not have trouble sleeping like this.

Off-center in his lap, Chris feels nothing like a father or a nurse.

-

Eddie dreams of vivid, warm colors: the flesh tone of Chris’ bare chest, heaving with effort as he silently rips Eddie’s pursuers in half, tearing their rib cages apart, or splitting them from the bottom-up and tossing them to either side. He roars but Eddie doesn’t hear the noise, just knows he’s being stared at through the flurry of sanguine gore that is made in his name.

He wakes up hard, the darkness of the night disjointed. It’s not the violence, exactly, that’s sexually arousing. It’s the gesture. It’s the transformation of a form of a prolonged horror into an act of protective intimacy.

It is the sense of a severe, rare triumph.

Delicately, Eddie touches Chris’ head and tilts it away so that he’s not breathing warmly down his erection, then settles back into sleep.

-

The next time he wakes, his eyes flutter open to find a face inches away, tracing his features with prying eyes.

“You gonna fuck him?”

Eddie cocks his head, appraising the solid model of his father. “Yes- and I’ll make a point of it, too,” he promises through narrowed lids, not fearful. The graphic, life-like way that his father’s voice sits in his inner ear, and body in his retina, appears so genuine that Eddie _knows_ it has to be fake. He’s being taunted, of course, but as an offspring, detects the undertone of crooked jealousy in his dad’s resonance. His father is getting desperate, going to these lengths in trying to appear authentic.

The man merely withdraws and shrugs.

“You should tell him the _real_ reason you joined the military-” He glistens. “Being around men with authority. I was certain you would give up girls someday. Knew that we had taught you better.”

“Not my decision; you butchered every female in my life,” he reminds with strained teeth.

The dad laughs, fond remembrance in his face. “Oh yeah. What was her name, Melody? You fought for a damn good time on her, kept me out for a long couple of years. That was _really_ the one who pushed you over the edge, huh? Shame they didn’t even let you keep your ring when they admitted you, what lengths love leads us to resisting ourselves.” He gives a sly smirk. “I’m going to wait ‘till you get really far away, when the two of you are all alone except for each other, and then I’ll have you kill him.”

Eddie forces defiance. “I’m too strong now,” he barks, “For all the torture, they made me better. So you can taunt me breathless from the outside, but you can’t get back into me. What?” he demands.

“When you _do_ make a point to fuck him,” his dad muses, “You will remember what I feel like. And then I will be inside of you again.”

The night is black once more.

Eddie doesn’t even feel the distant pressure of a head on his leg.

-

When they exit out of torture territory, Eddie is just as blind as Chris has been. Steel double-doors with thick padding on their bulk lead into darker, more isolated rooms which seem to attach on to infinity with no decided purpose allotted for their space. It doesn’t matter that they can’t figure out what they might have been used for; it’s further away each step they take, and every mile traveled is a possible increase in the chance that they won’t be found.

“When my wife died,” Eddie says suddenly, “I thought that I would never see my own light again.”

Chris regards him with a head turn. He’s no longer weak from the cuts on his feet. They break open and never scar, for he is always straining the lesions, but he’s seemed to have found some equilibrium in the toleration of that familiar twinge below. “What happened to her?” he briskly asks. They move at a similar, steady pace that isn’t particularly speedy, but will ensure the most daily travel in the long run.

Eddie smiles at nothing. “A garden spade. Hers, just washed and left to dry on the radiator. She wasn’t feeble, and so it took some digging until she let herself get nice and cold, but I think I always loved her more for that.” His lips purse, giving a gesture of humor towards Chris’ stony expression. “I only say this because it’s why I joined- the war.” He is not sure how much of this information he’s actually cognitively worked out, but it seems to be tapped, and he has no intention of plugging the source before learning how much will be released. “I don’t always have the control over my limbs that I wish. He, my dad, gets in sometimes, through my fingernails, works his way up to my muscles and then controls what I do. If he travels fast enough to my brain, then he can even get control of _why_ I do it. I remember now how frightening it all was. What was on the news… going to the grocer’s and stuffing the cupboards downstairs with cans. We lived in Chicago, and you must remember, the bombs they let in Indiana.”

Chris hesitates before giving an acute nod. “I was already stationed out.”

“In retrospect, the stress of it all was probably what ruined my good behavior.” He laughs, an undertone of vague sadness. “And here I thought she’d fixed me up right. Anyways, I never much liked that feeling of approaching death. So he got into me, and she died for it. I was so angry at the war itself that I think maybe I wanted to go over and stop it. Guess it won me again, at least, judging by what happened.”

Their strides are loud pauses in the conversation as Chris tries to find places to put Eddie’s words. He doesn’t feel any one thing substantially more than another, so he tries to just allow it to sink inside.

Eddie speaks to excuse the silence. “Were you ever married?”

He laughs, like that’s ridiculous. “Nah. Never really liked people. How long-”

But a hand reaches out and wrenches him backwards by the collar of his shirt, yanking Chris away, caught off-guard and stumbling over himself. He sees a thick elbow thrown against Eddie’s breast bone too, clamping down on the male’s neck to tear them away from each other, and the file out of Eddie’s hand. Eddie pries at the arm with his nails, superficially scratching the assailant’s skin, but the male just leans down to hiss violently in his ear.

“God damn, it’s good to see you,” a voice address Chris from above, right before a male squatting in the mouth of an open vent above their heads drops down to meet face-to-face. He wears a prison suit but also an expression of authority, his brow tipped in self-triumph, even in spite of the scar that meets it from its starting point below his lip. “We _really_ need you right now, Chris Walker.” He glances towards Eddie, who is breathlessly trying to slither out of the tight grasp restraining him. “And you need Gluskin,” he states aloud, “So we have the beginnings of a trade.”


	3. Parietal and Winking.

The tight fingers coiled behind Chris rely on the premise that the few stretches of fiber are indefinitely attached to his body. Discreetly, he knows that this fist holds onto nothing; that he can wrench himself away from it with no lost energy on his part, breaking free from their collective restraint and going on to destroy each one of them, regardless of how many more might be hunched between the roof and floor. But the second he moves, he knows that the elbow around Eddie’s throat will tighten and then twist to snap his neck. His advantage of brutality is not adequate if it generalizes the death it ensures.

“See- there’s a reason why you were followed,” the scarred man comments, following Chris’ train of thought across his darting eyes. “You’re smart, Chris, smart enough to bow to those who are truly stronger than you. I always knew that. And I always gave you your space.” He cocks his head, communicating that Chris should be let go of. “You can call me Maddox.” He steps forward, making a mock-gesture in which he cups his mouth with his palm to add, “I don’t go by Dr. Tieran anymore.”

Chris doesn’t know this man, hasn’t once seen him behind either set of bars. He shoots his focus towards Eddie to see if _he_ betrays any sort of recognition, but the younger is close-eyed and drifting. The stranger clutching him gives languid, half-minded strokes behind Eddie’s ears, which he leans sleepily into. Chris looks away, back to Maddox, who is studying him just as thoroughly.

“Where did you work?” he challenges, just loudly enough to convey disrespect.

“Mm, everywhere, in a way,” Maddox smiles, looking thrice at his devotees. “I was fairly lucky. When it all went down, I was in the archives, tucked away from the violence, sheltered by the backstories and diagnosis forms. It was good for me to be away, and equally so to not have a face that the patients were accustomed to associating with the idea of their enemy. Now- well, you guys don’t really care, do you?” He hmm’s at the three patients accompanying him, but they wear blankly submissive expressions. He snaps in the direction of one; the man doesn’t even respond reflexively. “Thanks to my job, though, I know all about you both. Especially you, Chris. _You’re_ the one everyone is always talking about. All you did for us in our transition period… you really transferred the power from one group to another- so is the story of why you were followed; you always have been, in and out of here. But so have I. And now you’ve given up your power.”

He doesn’t feel any words automatically rise to his throat. Doesn’t know the nuances needed to read this guy enough to know what will appease him. “What do you need from me?”

Chris turns sharply when he hears a soft moan from behind, the restrainer’s lips pressed to the base of Eddie’s neck.

Eyes contracted, Maddox snaps in their direction. “Hastings, control yourself. Give him over to Jar.”

As they exchange, the leader moves swiftly to Chris’ side, where he stands at least a half dozen heads shorter, made up only by the apparent reputation of his shadow. Chris tries to keep his vision solely on Maddox, but keeps losing his attention to the new hands that take Eddie by his limp shoulders and escort him on. A rope falls from the exposed ceiling tiles, another patient’s face peering down.

“We travel undercover,” Maddox divulges, nodding towards his three men, “So they’ll be taking Eddie up through the vents to get back to base- he’ll be fine,” he includes, appraising Chris’ expression. “No offense, but you’re not going to squeeze yourself in there. I’ll take you up and we can have a private chat about what I need for you to see him again. He’s safe up until the moment you decide that he is not worth the exchange. But I don’t think that’ll happen.”

Chris is reluctant to follow Maddox down the hall, keeping his eyes on the way a man in orange hooks his arm around Eddie’s waist to help him up the cable. Eddie looks uselessly disconnected, indiscriminately stranded somewhere between deeply asleep and harshly aware. His body doesn’t respond to anything other than basic physical cues as he’s draped over a shoulder, and Chris _has_ to look elsewhere before he dismisses his impulse control.

“He’s worth the exchange,” Chris barks, “What do you want?”

“Okay,” Maddox placates, charmed, pressing a guiding palm against Chris’ meaty shoulder. “Come with me, we’ll have plenty of flights to talk about this.”

The wing he and Eddie lived in would have never wasted its budget and notoriety on superfluous masonry. Here, legitimate architecture periodically accentuates the practical white stone paving the walls in the emergency-exit stairwell that Maddox leads him up. “Where is this?” he demands shortly, wringing his throat as tight as he needs to keep his panting concealed.

“Rich mans’ unit,” Maddox sings, eyes set up. “Money pays for quiet mouths, even in the press… though I hardly suspect you got a tour when you barged in demanding Gluskin’s whereabouts.” He thinks with his head tilted. He talks too damn much. “They _really_ fucked up on you, Walker. These other sorry asses, who cares? But you’ve got people who wait outside. It’s going to be a shit show when they storm this place- you’re going to make it one, I’m sure.”

For all of the pain that rests between Chris’ toes, he does not once stutter as he treads up the stairs, following the ink-dark hair of the young body affront. “What _I_ can do,” he reminds.

“Yeah, yeah.” Maddox flicks the air. “So. My people have been watching your people- _were_ your people. Now they’re chaos and they need to be settled. I want your permission to dominate them.”

Chris grunts through his nose and looks up, waiting for the obvious to be surpassed.

Maddox continues. “Like I said, you and Gluskin will be safe from both us and them. You won’t be hunted anymore, on either ends. No territory wars, no split groups. I want all your resources and bodies, and I want you to be willing to fight them for me if they act up.”

He feels like throwing up on the amount of nativity before him. “They aren’t going to listen to you just because you have an army of your own. They’re going to tear you and all your petty rich kids up in one go.”

A smile forms at the edge of Maddox’s mouth. “The thing about the affluent, Walker, is that they’ve been all-but trained to discard their morals. Money’s saved them time and time again, and their instincts for killing are _sharp._ ” He pauses, then stops at the top of the stairs, forcing Chris to wait a few steps below him. “Regardless, they are all people. We can break yours in just like I did mine. Slowly, of course, maybe five at a time. Gluskin will help with that.” Then he cuts right to it. “I also want what’s in D block.”

Chris cannot say what he intends to before the leader elaborates. “I want what’s in your cell in D block.”

Dryly, Chris clears his throat. “No.”

“Look.” He motions for Chris to meet him at their full height at the top of the stairs, then pushes through the wooden door leading to a beige-painted common room in which the only inhabitants are seating in peripheral chairs, staring blankly into the center and waiting for instruction. “I understand the symbolism. Your old jail is where you locked up the nurses. I appreciate that. And I know your plan. But I have bigger ones. Is perseverating on your _emotions_ something more important than making this a sustainable ecosystem? Because if not, Gluskin will be their feed instead.”

Hesitating, Chris looks around to meet the milky expressions that hover around him. “We don’t end up like that,” he seems to question.

“Of course not,” Maddox laughs, “You will be treated as one of us but you will be tended to like kings. We will feed and water you; you will have rooms here, a safe haven. You will know more luxury than you ever had in the military or growing up in Mexican apartments with siblings to fifth cousins sharing your bed. There will never be any reason that the outside needs to come back in. You’ll call out to your general and tell him to back down. Then we will have this forever.”

He is showing off his information just to prove he has it. “You’re no better,” Chris gnashes to himself.

“Nor are you. Your visions are shorted to one established slut and yet you still chose him over us all.” He looks pleadingly at Chris, feigning situational weakness that he doesn’t currently possess. “One supervised phone call, Walker. Just tell him you’re alright and to leave this alone. And then we will leave _you_ alone.”

Chris thinks of the first time he met Eddie, sharing a thermos of water under the shade of a mountain’s shadow.

“You can have me,” the older agrees, honing in on Maddox’s gaze of triumph. “I’ll do what you say. I’ll-”

But the leader jerks his chin up jarringly, stifling Chris’ words, causing his men to click to their feet and into place.

“Get him a bath and a meal. And take him to Gluskin,” he orders.

-

Eddie has one of their taut, thick-packed woolen blankets wrapped around his shoulders and pulled over his knees, letting it shelter him. He tilts his head against the bed frame and struggles to keep his breathing rhythmic, but not even the bloated comfort of sheep fleece is enough to put him at ease. He doesn’t know where he’s been, when he got lost. Even his dad is wandering vaguely in his head, too deeply to be seen.

Then Chris enters the room, dropped off by a fleeting patient, and everything comes back.

He tosses his cheek to the side and sees his file lying on a compartment in the rolling closet, immediately losing interest as soon as the urgent panic is cinched. His attention turns fully to Chris’ weary gaze as the older sluggishly makes it to the bed and sinks down onto its side. He blinks and smiles gently, comforting through his sadness, letting his palm land on Eddie’s blanketed knee. “You’ll be safe. Even if it’s not the way I wanted.”

“We couldn’t run forever,” Eddie responds delicately, squirming up and crossing his legs beneath himself.

Taking his head into his hands, Chris demands his thoughts to comply with his body’s speed, kneading the empty space between his eyes and nose which latently sit where there could be further senses. His human construction was not built to the situations he’s unable to wholly adapt to. “I’ll think of another way,” he assures, tilting so that the rawness of him is available for Eddie’s consumption. He hopes, madly, that he won’t follow the tweak of resentment that scratches on his initiative; in that Eddie is the endgame of all his decisions and sacrifices, and though he tries to suppress it, _that_ is the somebody he now needs to expect Eddie to be.

Gazing around the room with awakened eyes, Eddie darts through the bedrooms’s details: white molding on the walls, soft, seafoam wallpaper that is warmed by the quality of the lamp at their beside, the firmness of the mattress that’s tucked by bedding Eddie would be more than happy to wear as winter clothing. He offers; “Fuck, it’s gorgeous in here. No chance there’s a better place in the asylum.”

“I was trying to get us _out_ of the asylum,” Chris hisses quietly, folding his knuckles down.

Eddie wears a look of confusion, bordering on betrayal. “And go… where, darling? Turn me right back in again?”

Now Chris is the one whose expression contorts into flustered offense. “Not like that-” He snarls when Eddie’s fingers tighten into a ball around the fabric. “Go Easy, Gluskin.”

Retracting his claws, Eddie takes in a deep breath and runs both hands along the sides of his hairline, sweeping the chalky black locks away from his eyes. “Think they’ll help catch us up with maintenance? My hair hasn’t been this long since I was nine.”

Chris sighs through a nod, pulling his head down. “Yeah. Yeah, they’ll do anything for us now.” The tension dissolves, but its serrated edge winks before vanishing, sentient in the knowledge that it has not been given a chance to smooth over for the next time it arrives. When he lifts his neck, Eddie is looking at him expectantly, eyes unreadable.

Nervously, Chris raises his arm in a jerky movement but then rethinks, hesitating in the air. At last, he lets it reach towards Gluskin and wrap around the back of his neck, experimentally stroking the sensitive bridge above his spine.

Eddie doesn’t shiver or lean in or make a sound. He dips his head acutely to the side, rejecting.

Chris retreats, drawing his hands back into his lap. He looks into them quietly, trying to keep the hurt stoppered. “Where do you go, when you lose yourself?” He angles his eyesight so that it falls back on Eddie, the male fixed in his position. There’s no answer, so he keeps his mouth moving, filtering what he lets be known. “They’ll let us stay here if I give our units over to him. They want you to torture patients again.” He searches for any reflex or reaction in the creases of Eddie’s face.

“I’ll do that,” he murmurs, embracing his own legs.

“Fuck no you won’t,” Chris snaps back, “You’ll lose your mind and I won’t have you lost to me again.”

The expression Eddie gives him is so detailed in its intrigued state of anger, but the words that come from it fall flatly in Chris’ ears. “If you make me leave this place, then you will never see me again.”

Clearly Eddie hasn’t let that go- Chris knows he’s intelligent not to, that Eddie senses it lingering in Chris’ purpose. “I mean when your eyes go blank and your body sucks you inward,” he restates.

“I mean that too.” Eddie stares vehemently at Chris, chest heaving. “There are things that happened to me that made my body stop being a safe place. There are things that I can’t feel or else I stop being able to make the distinction between being here and back there, and I will do anything to get out of that place. _Anything._ You think my soul is wrecked now, how about when I kill you to stop you from forcing me outside? How about when killing doesn’t get me out of that feeling and I have to do more, make more harm, make bolder statements?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Chris begins, “But-”

“You don’t, and you’re not _meant to_ ,” Eddie cuts him off, slapping his palms down to either side. “Go fuck yourself; thinking that you understand, somehow. If everything you know comes from a country I can’t even remember being in, then you don’t know shit about me.”

“Eddie,” he growls warningly.

But Eddie has thrown the sheets off him and is making his way across the room, snatching the folder up from the drawer. He spares no moment for contemplation before he tosses it into Chris’ lap, broken bits of glossy photography spilling from its side. Chris looks helplessly up at Eddie before he cranes back down to the paper on his knees. He lifts a stack of ripped photographs and shuffles through them.

Chris’ mouth is slightly parted but soundless when he looks up at Eddie. “Is…?”

Eddie returns, sinking on his knee into the mattress beside Chris. “My therapy,” he states interruptedly, smiling cruelly at himself. “They didn’t just throw me down there. They planned it, making sure my family was with me, in all their natural states.” He looks Chris up and down, then rests his fingertips admonishingly on Chris’ shoulders. “I’m kind of a whore, darling.”

Up until now, Chris hasn’t considered that Eddie’s trauma might go beyond bombs.

“How old are… you?” he asks about the child in the pictures.

“Started at eight.” His voice is devoid of self-sympathy; he is accustomed to rattling off the information. “Around puberty, we switched from still life to cinematography. Not even Dr. Morgan has the vhs tapes, as far as I know. Sure they would have used those on me too, if they could’ve.” He pinches the tip of Chris’ bone. “Ended at thirteen. But then, I guess I just moved on to new management.”

A hand comes up to grasp Eddie’s wrist, freezing the ministration of his fingers. “They left these for you to find? When they put you down there, all alone?”

Bitter in his attempt at facetiously addressing this, Eddie’s palm glides to cup Chris’ cheek. “Love, it’s no worse than what they left in my head.”

Chris doesn’t know how he will be able to look away from this. “They gave up their arsenal though,” he assures himself, a tone of gratefulness hiding away.

Eddie plucks a photo from within the stack, slipping it out. “This particular one is the worst,” he says as he slides it beneath the older’s thumb, “But it epitomizes things. Pain on one side, suffocation on the other. So is how I continue to thrive: living my life biting off cocks so I can breathe again.” He laughs, deprecating himself. “It is so horrible I cannot even muster up the word for it in my head.”

“Spit roasted,” Chris thinks aloud.

Eddie blinks, stunned. “Yes. Thank you,” he incredulously states, then helplessly smiles to himself. “Fuck you, Walker.”

He doesn’t understand the solid compassion in Chris’ eyes, focused on him as if peering through towards his soul. Then he narrows his own and purses his lips. “Eat them,” he commands.

Chris makes a puzzled noise and inclines his head.

“You didn’t get fat by abstaining. Put that in your mouth and swallow it.”

“…Huh?”

Eddie stares him down.

A few seconds more pass of Chris wondering at Eddie. Then, gradually, he bends his mouth down to the rim of the photo, swiping his tongue along the edge like he’s licking a stamp. His eyes shoot up to Eddie, bright with the request for approval. Eddie nods, coaxing him to bear his teeth down on the printed paper and pull a scrap of it back into his cheek. He chews slowly, feeling Eddie’s hand return to possessively wrap around the back of his head.

He makes a muffled sound as he swallows, Eddie’s palm absorbing the rickety vibrations of bone on teeth, but then bends back into the entire pile and begins ripping at them with his molars, calculatedly finishing what Eddie began chaotically. He closes his eyes and feigns signs of pleasure, destroying the scraps and hiding them away inside of him. And maybe something about it _does_ excite him, in being the monster that will consume anything that Eddie wants deliberately tortured and speedily dissolved.

Photos devoured, the near-empty folder falls to the ground. He grabs Gluskin around the hips and pulls him onto his lap, wrenching the teasing fingers off his scalp. “Now you,” he sounds, bringing the hand to his lips and sucking on Eddie’s knuckles. There are no traces of the photographs on his breath or between his teeth. They have offered no nutrition that has changed how he is.

Eddie looks up at Chris’ steady gaze, conveying some middle feeling on a scale between contrived boredom and rapt interest. His fingers hook into the older’s cheek, wet with saliva that drips between the padding of his knuckles.

“You’re soft,” Eddie muses to himself.

“I told you I was,” Chris rumbles, rolling his hips to pull Eddie closer to his chest. His hands slide down Eddie’s sides, exploring the structure of their curvature beneath the two-piece cotton outfits that they’ve been draped in. Eddie is angled and rough, a bare coating of skin on him. “You need more of it. Something more substantial than pornography.”

“Then let go of me,” Eddie entreats passionlessly, feeling Chris grasp him even tighter.

“That’s not what this is,” he promises breathlessly. He lightens his grip and tilts back to see Eddie’s face, the younger’s expression helpless in flush. “Does it feel like it is?”

His eyes flutter away. “I don’t know.”

Chris runs his hand through Eddie’s hair. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want it.”

A flicker of amusement crosses over Eddie. “Now I know you’re a faggot,” he purrs loudly.

“I’m not gay; I was in the military.” He pulls Eddie off of his abdomen and lays him with his back to the bed, twisting so that the male is stretched out with his bare feet in Chris’ lap. Smoothing the fabric back, he pats the length of Eddie’s ankles up to his knees, murmuring. “And I’m not a rapist.”

Eddie hums playfully, stretching his arms out above his head. “Can’t fathom why I even like you, then.” The touch is something he hasn’t felt the like of in at least more than a year, so much skin activated at once.

“What was your wife like?” he inspects suddenly, snagging Eddie’s attention.

As he fastens his hands together, Eddie allows the imagery of Melody rise to mind. “All aprons and red colors. Talking on a corded phone next to the basement door. She was an era of well-done pot roast that ended in mushroom clouds.”

Chris is absent as he runs his hand over Eddie’s calf. “If there hadn’t been so many fucking people screaming in my ear, I would have taken apart those doctors at half the speed and with twice the leftovers.” His expression is dark, but it carries Gluskin-centric pride. “Do what they did to you, but rougher. I could be a rapist.”

“Would you kill my father?” Eddie deadpans, hoping that he’s heard deep inside himself, hoping he is listening.

A fist tightens around Eddie’s leg, Chris’ long uncut nails digging into his skin. “Where is he.”

“Not alive,” Eddie sighs, “But still present. He… he talks to me. He takes over my body, makes me do what he would do.”

“What would he do?” Chris whispers.

“Take you from me.”

“You can control yourself,” he says, not exactly gentle about the subject. “You have to remember that you’re the one who is going to survive in the end. That’s what drives you. Not him.”

“That is _exactly_ his plan,” Eddie jeers, pulling himself up to sit with his back to the wall. He squeezes his kneecaps with either palm to ground himself to the bed. “He doesn’t see me being able to advance with you in his way. It’s all about salting and preserving me so he can have me later, _just_ him, and you’re _rotting_ me. Just like everyone else. Just like everyone before you. I’m a slut and he’s angry that I’m wasting myself on you.”

Chris’ face is hard. “He is not your identity.”

“Are you really so thick that your brain is also a mound of lard, or are you withholding understanding for your own sake?” Eddie spits back.

Sighing, Chris looks exasperatedly at the floor. “We’ll make this right,” he utters to himself.

“There is nothing right about me.” When he looks over, Eddie has his chest in his hand, seemingly trying to hold all of the beings locked inside him behind the bars of his ribcage. “They weren’t cruel for putting me here, sweet. This is where I ought to have been all along.” He tilts his head, hair falling near to his eyes. “Do you think time folds inwards, Chris? Do you think that perhaps I was raped all those years because God knew what I was going to become?”

Chris is thinking, the two of them side-by-side. “The result isn’t mutually exclusive from the cause.”

Craning his neck towards the ceiling, the back of Eddie’s scalp rolls tiredly against the wallpaper. “Would you kiss me?” he manages, the words stalling in his mouth. He clings to the single memory he has, of Chris holding him on his shoulders and letting him strain against his neck so he can see the horizon over the dunes. Maybe Chris had wrung the war out of it, even if it only lasted those few moments.

Chris grabs him and asks him to climb back up, smoothing the tangled strands of hair away from the younger’s face as he pulls his leg over Chris’ side and settles back down on his lap. “This good?” he asks before sinking his mouth into Eddie’s collars, pulling the hem of his shirt down with his teeth and marking sloppy kisses into the nook between bone. He slides his hands up the length of both Eddie’s arms, feeling the arrangement of half-form muscled and clean skin, then meeting in the middle and lacing their fingers.

Eddie makes a noise that transforms when Chris licks up his neck until he finds a tender space to nurse, sucking the skin against his tongue. Eddie lifts his chin to offer more, freeing one of his hands, which slips beneath Chris’ shirt, blinding seeking the swell of flesh that ripples in so many places that Eddie has to be careful not to linger and become lost.

Toothy barriers clamp around Eddie’s throat, defining the territory for him to lap at, suckling deep bruises that Eddie feels continue far below his epidermis. His exploring hand is wrenched out of Chris’ shirt and thrust behind him, the older binding his wrists together behind his neck with one tightened fist. His right hand, palm opened and groping, runs along the edge of Eddie’s clothed chest and begins rubbing at his pectorals, thumbing the shape of nipples erect below the fabric. “Know you don’t want to be complicit,” he breathes, keeping Eddie’s hands restrained, “Know you’re scared of provoking him. But let him out, Gluskin, I have a few things to say.”

Smiling, Eddie arches his back and blooms for Chris. “It’s just me now, darling,” he assures, “But I’ll send word. What will you have him know?” He manages to get one of his arms back, which he uses to grab Chris’ face and bring them to eye level, the angry coat of lustful shine transposed from Walker to him.

“Tell him,” Chris asserts, syllables slowing, his eyes narrowing as Eddie’s dilate from vulnerability, “That I’m going to fuck his son into the mattress until he comes in my hand.”

Eddie feels the weakness of his limbs shake his mental state, barely able to keep his eyes from lidding as he gazes down at Chris’ mouth. “Right now?” he sways.

“When you’re hard and aching.”

But he _is,_ as Chris brings his wide lips to Eddie’s mouth and opens a space for his tongue, dipping down Eddie’s throat and afterwards sucking him back into his cheek. Chris speaks without faulty charm, almost so much that it’s stilted, like he’s poking half-embarrassed, half-gritty-for-the-sake-of-it fun at his own words, but saying them anyway. His hands climb smoothly up Eddie’s side with a muscle memory that implies re-exploration.

A groan leaves Eddie’s throat as he inclines himself away. “Isn’t the first time we did this?” It comes out casually, but Chris knows enough to hear the apprehension below it.

Chris lifts Eddie an inch off his lap and then sets him back down closer to his waist. His hands go back to their movement under Eddie’s shirt, stroking him comfortingly. “As scary as it is to not remember,” he starts, “Least I’m less likely to bore you.” He grins, pulling his lip under his teeth and looking through his blonde lashes with such helpless eagerness. “I know everything you like,” he says quietly, spilling desire. “Don’t have to fumble. You can have it all straightaway.”

Petting Chris through the second joining of lips, Eddie feels the raw sheen of sweat on his body, come from Chris’ pores; testosterone like a second shaving of skin, leaving calcite-like residue between his fingers. He tastes and absorbs it through his nose, and it leaves him panting with a fervor that his single body is always too cold and stoic to manage. Pleasure has always been a quick tipping towards either the hopeful end of the obligation or the erratic relief finally managed after maybe an hour of tugging. With Chris, every second permits him to pleasure. Every moment builds on the next.

The bigger’s arms wrap tight around Eddie and keep him locked against his chest as he rises to his feet, turning completely around and setting the younger on the mattress, where he was sitting before. Instead of role-reversing and sinking onto Eddie’s lap, he tilts over the bed, putting his weight on his wrists so as to not completely crush the other, and leans down to kiss him again.

“You didn’t…?” Eddie breaks away to swallow, giving Chris the opportunity to pry his shirt over his head. “You didn’t know about my rape as a kid? I didn’t ever tell you?”

The word obviously rings distastefully to Chris, especially now, in the center of their intimacy, but Eddie thinks fuck him if he’s sensitive about it, because this is his _life._ But Chris shakes his head definitively, sympathetic, stroking hands reduced to thick rubs that convey guilty consolation. “I didn’t know.”

“Weren’t you suspicious when I started fucking my fellow soldier?” he dryly cuts out.

The imagery apparently gets to Chris, and he whines lowly as he buries his face into Eddie’s exposed chest. “Not even when it meant you were fucking your commander,” he says between licks to Eddie’s navel.

Eddie cocks his head. “ _Shit,_ then.”

Chris drags the tip of his tongue to Eddie’s waist band, then wraps his fingers around the tan, elastic barrier. “Can I take these?” he asks hurriedly, sinking down to the floor on his knees and looking up at Eddie with entreating eyes. Eddie wants to maybe swear at him or knee him in the jaw for making him participate so actively, but there is something nice about the way he can’t stop the frantic nodding of his head, despite the multiplying beats of anxiety in his chest.

He lifts his hips into the air, the cotton bottoms swiftly tugged down to and off his ankles. Eddie doesn’t process his nakedness, or the inequality of Chris’ entirely clothed body, before the sensation of his legs being smoothed apart overpowers the shame with arousal. Chris treads his fingers across the sensitive flesh of his pale inner thighs, flushed as asks, “We okay?”

Eddie moans in response at the texture of Chris’ warm, layered palm running across his legs and then behind to cup his ass, pulling him forward until his erect cock is close to his face, with nothing he can do about the purposeful breaths that Chris now places on it. He finally cranes down to lick him harshly from balls to tip, savoring the moment that he knows is the first moment for Eddie, with him like this. And how grateful _he_ is to be back.

He mouths around tantalizingly for a few seconds, cooing filthy praise like “how _thick_ , Gluskin” and “spitting all over me,” and when he’s exhausted of words, he sinks Eddie’s cock into his mouth and reaches to fondle his balls, vigor increasing as Eddie comes to clutch at the nape of his neck.

“Please-” Eddie murmurs, too much suction moving him too quickly, as he pinches at the roll of skin at the tip of Chris’ spine. “Your tongue.”

Chris yields and loosens his mouth, clutching Eddie’s erection with a hand around the base so he can hold him still as he swirls his tongue around Eddie’s cock in consistent circles. He mm’s around it, and Eddie doesn’t know how much of it is playfully constructed and how much is genuine, but it makes him hotter either way. He has trouble holding back his own voice as Chris starts bobbing his mouth down, so dizzied by the sensation that he thoughtlessly fucks upwards into Chris’ mouth, deeper into his yielding throat.

Chris slides his hand underneath Eddie and squeezes his ass, bringing the tip of his middle finger to Eddie’s hole, circling the tight muscles with his nail as he experimentally presses against the firm ring.

An explosion of pain to his eye sends Chris stumbling back on his knees; pure shock stops him from immediately realizing it was Eddie’s knuckles that cracked against his skin.

Before he’s hit again, Chris manages to catch the second fist in his hand and bring Eddie to a stop, jumping to his feet to meet the younger’s fighting pose. “Stand the fuck down,” he demands, but has to snatch Eddie’s wrist as it winds up and releases at him again. He slides each crippling grip up to Eddie’s wrists and twists them down, immobilizing the other, who is red and angry and ready to kill.

“You rapist,” Eddie accuses.

Chris hasn’t decided on rage or sorrow as he forces Eddie onto the bed, pinning him so he can’t attack again. He just wants his hand free so he can cover his eye and measure the swelling. He wants Eddie to stop looking at him with eyes so wild that he can’t be sure who’s in there, right now.

“Don’t call me that,” he snaps, the pressure he’s putting on Eddie’s wrists perhaps more punishing than precautionary. “Don’t ever call me that.”

“Molester,” Eddie sneers defiantly, trying fruitlessly to twist his elbows under his legs so he can wriggle out. “Assaulter. _Pig._ ”

“Why are you doing this?” Chris roars down at him.

“You didn’t ask me first,” Eddie shrieks back, trying to bite at Chris’ fingers. “You’re a fucking _rapist._ ”

Chris lets go and barrels backwards, lifting his hands in the air. “You never had this problem with anyone before,” he declares too hastily.

Something different washes through Eddie; it’s visible from the outside, and Chris instantly feels so horrible that he takes a step forward again. Eddie flinches. “That isn’t what I meant,” he urges.

“You meant,” Eddie says exhaustedly, climbing to his feet and running his hand across his face, “That I never had a problem hiding it when I was being viciously ass-fucked by an orderly to get something special, or whatever. I didn’t think this was one of those.”

“It’s not,” Chris barks angrily.

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Eddie amends, turning. He gathers up his clothes and heads for the door. “But you’re not in charge anymore, are you? Nothin’ to get from you anyways.”

Chris is too scared to go after him, and by the time he can move again, he has no idea which way Eddie turned.

-

Eddie doesn’t remember the layout of this place from when they brought him up, and with his baggy eyes and slopped heart, he doesn’t think that he’ll retain very much this time either. Maybe the shock of the finery will stick with him, at least. He keeps in mind the possible goal of finding a new bed as he wanders, the halls mostly quiet. Each vacant room he peeks his head into has at least one luxury, a fireplace or grand piano or art supplies- there will be a spare couch for him, at the least. He tugs the sleeves of his shirt down and wishes he had a change of clothing so he could stop feeling so utterly soiled inside and out.

Eventually, after discerning the circuits that loop the halls around, Eddie begins to notice possible signs of community, following the sound of clattering trays and silverware squeaks. He is coming upon a set of double doors with steamed windows just as a male pushes through, holding a bitten apple in his hand and immediately lighting up with surprise.

“Hungry, Eddie?” the man asks. “I was just coming to find you guys.”

“Who are you?” he asks blandly, eyes burning.

“Ah, sorry, Maddox.” He brushes apple juice off his palm and swipes it out for a handshake. “Sorry ‘bout the dramatic intake, but I think we got it worked out. Walker tell you everything?”

Eddie hums unresponsively, giving a meager shrug.

“You- okay? Why don’t you get Chris and come get something to eat with us.” He talks to himself, apparently, as if stretching over every topic may pique somebody’s interest. “I mean, part of being the archivist meant sorting through countless interviews, and at least half of them complained about the food at least once. Which is why mine is like fine fucking dining in comparison.”

Tilting his head, Eddie appraises Maddox again. “Archivist,” he says to himself. “Can you do something for me then? A favor?” He hesitates, then hates himself for hesitating, and then gives the most self-destructive narrowed lids he’s ever offered, a standard promise, a favor for a favor.

Maddox stands and watches, sizing Eddie up. “What sort?”

“You see the pictures of me as a child in with my file?”

After a second, he gets a conflicted nod.

“If there’re anymore left in there, can you get them for me? Anything, pictures, court transcripts, cassettes…”

There is no remaining tension in Maddox’s smile. “Oh, yeah. I can do that, Gluskin. You’re family now. It’s the least we can do.”

Eddie’s eyebrow raises, challenging and provocative. “I thought the _least_ you could do was let me live,” he disputes.

Maddox laughs and looks over his shoulder as if relaying to somebody else what a riot this is. “I get why you’re bitter,” he winks, “But yeah, tomorrow I’ll get to ya all your records. If you can’t eat now, I’ll make sure they leave you something wrapped in the fridge. Just take what’s got your name, obviously.”

Eddie wanders a while more, wondering what other slew of sexual positions Chris may name if he sees the rest of the ways Eddie’s father bent him.

-

The lights are down but Chris isn’t asleep when he sees Eddie appear in the doorway, his back to the light and body silhouetted. Chris tries to say something but he’s hushed from above, Eddie closing the door and slowly making his way back towards the bed. He moves to lift his head, but Eddie steps forward and presses his fingers to Chris’ lips, pushing him back down, and lifting the blanket from him so he can slide in.

Chris is lying on his back, and Eddie climbs up to straddle his upper quadriceps, leaning over Chris’ wet-then-dried face, pulling the blanket onto his own shoulders. “I was thinking,” he whispers, eyes adjusting and catching onto Chris’, “I need you, darling. Anything you want to give me. I should never be so ungrateful again.”

He lays his hand down on Chris’ groin and starts palming at his soft cock through his clothes, keeping his eyes focused on Chris’ gaze.

The man’s eyes turn hard, and he grabs Eddie’s hand away. “Don’t do that,” he mewls. “Don’t pretend I’m not who I am.”

Eddie’s eyes become heavy, but then go vacant. “Men are all pigs,” he states.

“I love you,” Chris answers.

He slowly releases his hold on Eddie’s grasp, but the younger doesn’t make another grab for him. “Come here,” he urges Eddie, wrapping his arms around the boy and lowering him onto his back, putting him safely between his own body and the wall. “Stay with me tonight?” he asks, voice wavering.

Eddie nods feebly, pressing his forehead into the thickness of Chris’ arm so that he can choke his tears before they come.

“It’s alright,” he hears, and eventually opens up to feel Chris’ cool strokes gliding down his shoulders. “Stay with me and you’ll be alright.”

-

It feels about late morning by the time they pull on new sets of clothing and Eddie leads Chris tiredly to the kitchen he found.

“Didn’t know you snored like that,” Eddie lightly offers, a small smile, apologetic but also forgiving, pulling at his jaw. “I think you actually dreamed.” He runs the edge of his knuckles along the sheer coatings of paint on the walls, shy when he catches curious eyes with other patients who now inhabit the recreation rooms. It really does look like it could be a legitimate, albeit short-staffed mental hospital here.

“Were you awake when Maddox dropped off supplies?”

Chris makes notes of the geography of the rooms, sparing any personal analysis for the sake of documenting the bare layout. He purposefully doesn’t look anyone in the eye.

“Yeah, he came in and checked on us throughout the night,” Eddie murmurs, coming upon the double doors and pressing his palms against them, hoping they’re late enough to avoid the noise of others chewing. He pauses to turn back at Chris, a rush of comfort at the man’s wide girth, demonstrated in the form of Chris’ arms swelling out from the short sleeves of his shirt, and hands remaining in fists against his hips. He forgets what he was about to add.

Eddie shrugs in response to the questioning look Chris gives him, then enters into the dining hall.

The eating area is accessed through a strip of deserted ovens and appliances, which they hastily sweep through, Eddie dropping down only for a moment so that he can reach on his heels for the refrigerator labeled “patients,” finding layers of Styrofoam stacked and inked with surnames. He lifts up the top few containers to grab his and Walker’s, scurrying after Chris, who slides heavily into a table and thrusts his head in his hands.

Eddie sets the meals down but remains on his feet, a palm for security pressed against the wooden, irregularly covered surface. This is what he’d consider military-style dining, maybe, about three dozen benches attached to tables lined up across the wide room, a scattering of utensils in the middle of each. Eddie passes his eyes across the few lazing patients, some putting spoons in their mouths, others marking paper with crayons.

“You always get to be x,” he notices a bald patient complaining to his partner across the table, “’S why you always win.” He grips his pencil annoyed, but reluctantly circles the notebook page.

When Chris doesn’t raise his head, Eddie lowers onto the bench across from him, parting the two containers. In the unlatched boxes are two separated meals, potato and meat and broccoli on the left, mashed eggs on the right with a miniature sausage fitted in the middle. Chris tilts his cheek so it’s resting on his hand and disinterestedly pushes his lid open, looking sheepishly at the preserved food.

Eddie takes two forks from the table mat and drops one down for Chris. “You gonna mope through lunch too?” he tries, but Chris looks at him with bored irritation instead of playfully battering back. He’s lifted his head to perhaps respond, but gets distracted by a figure approaching at Eddie’s side, expression morphing into neutral politeness for the stranger.

“There’s a microwave in the back…” the guy suggests awkwardly, looking from Eddie to Chris. “If you need it. And milk in the fridge is for anybody. Coffee and tea, too.”

Something similar to jealously occurs to Eddie at Chris’ mannerisms revitalized for the sake of being friendly with the patient, but is smoothed in relief by the way the crease in his forehead doesn’t unfurl in feigned complacency. “How does Maddox keep fresh food available?” he questions, tone level but an urgency of secret-sharing brushing the surface.

The male’s eyes glint with adoration and equal wonder. “Since Maddox took over and hired all new staff, things’ve been better than ever.” He looks near-delusional with satisfaction. “See, even the mashed potatoes aren’t powder anymore! You’re lucky ducks. If you’d been admitted months earlier, this was a whole different place. Old management was awful.”

Chris waits to laugh until after the guy moves on, a bitter, throaty sound reserved for Eddie’s individual audience. “Fuck Maddox.” He moves the food around with his fork, finally lifting some suspiciously to his mouth. “Didn’t realize he _brainwashed_ these guys. Also, it’s instant. Still don’t know how he keeps all this food in supply though.”

Eddie shrugs and starts eating his own; he never cooks so his taste buds don’t discern such things. “People believe the convenient.”

The look Chris gives him is penetrating. “Yes, I know.”

To their right comes a crash, the o-scribe leaping over the table and grabbing his playmate by the neck, forcing them both onto the floor. Chris automatically gets to his feet to pull himself out of the bench and intervene, but is slower than the two guards who stamp inside, eyes focused only on the disruption, the rest of their bodies rigid with a lack of expression. Each make for one of the assailants, using iron-like grips to separate them, then drag them out of the dining hall.

“Fucking cheater,” the patient yells to the guards, but barely anybody looks up for more than a second.

“They’re patients too,” Chris undertones to Eddie with his finger flicked out, tracing the guards’ routes out the door. “You can tell by the look in their eyes and the way they walk. Maddox ain’t doing all this alone. I don’t know what he’s trying to get out of it, but I’ll figure it out.”

Thoughtfully, Eddie dips into the dinner portion of his plate. “Does it matter that he’s lying if it’s helping?” His tilts his head, perhaps saying exactly what he knows Chris will not agree with. “Come now, sweet, you have to admit that it actually feels healthy in here for once.”

“Not healthy if there’s no rehabilitation,” Chris sustains.

Eddie nearly chokes on an angrily incredulous laugh. “Hah, that’s not something that the criminally ill have rights to,” he reminds, “We’re beyond treatment- we’re beyond _this_. Honestly. Who cares what Maddox is trying to accomplish? This is better than any of us can ever deserve.” He shrugs with vicious apathy. “Not that you would know. Not that you’ve ever really been one of us.”

Gritted teeth return. “You deserve to improve.”

“I’m content here,” Eddie fights.

“I don’t want you to be content. I want you to be _better_.”

“What about you, then?” Eddie barks back, stuffing the lid back down on his food. “You get to make everyone better? How about you, Chris? They fucked you up and you need to learn some way to deal with it instead of projecting it all on the people you _govern._ ”

“I’m here because you’re here.”

“I fucking hate that.” Eddie folds his arms onto the table and sighs into them. “You shouldn’t be here, Chris. You _aren’t_ one of us. You’re a good guy.”

“You are too,” he pleads.

Eddie feels himself go red with stifled laughter. “Fuck, Walker. I dunno, maybe you do belong here.”

-

“Hold still.”

Chris sits atop the bedside dresser, looming over Eddie, whose neck is lent down as he sits on the edge of the bed between Chris’ knees. The older’s bare feet rest on the blankets.

A pair of art-room scissors cut away Eddie’s long strands, black elongated pieces of hair falling to the floor between the bed and drawers. Chris’ hand tilts Eddie’s head to the right, accessing more scalp, where he runs the silver blades choppily over every strand that falls into the younger’s eyes.

“My father liked my hair long,” Eddie thinks out loud, tingling wherever the shears brush harmlessly against his bare skin. “Could have been his preference, but I think, you know, it was a gender thing. There was a wider audience if they could market me as a girl.”

“That makes me sick,” Chris growls, keeping the body of hair incrementally less-short at the top of Eddie’s head and close to his ears. He shifts away so that Eddie can lift his neck, giving him view of his finished work. He hands the scissors over, for Eddie to see himself in the slivers of their reflection.

“Not me,” Eddie returns, holding the shears to the light, “I’m utterly desensitized.” He puts the scissors down and holds out his palm. “Give me your hand, darling.”

Chris does so, almost dangerously thoughtlessly. “But,” Eddie continues, curving the angle of the scissors around Chris’ pinky, “When somebody with fucking _talons_ probes at my asshole, I guess I learn that’s not entirely true.” He smiles to show surrendering vulnerability, then moves on to trim the next nail.

“Sorry,” Chris whispers.

Shaking his head, Eddie lets the punctuated bits of keratin land among his lost hair. “Don’t be sorry. We all lug around dead parts of ourselves.” He takes Chris’ other hand, cutting the nails down until they are thin, waxy things that bump out at the end of Chris’ fingertips. “You look lovely,” he simpers, dragging his eyes along Chris’ hairline. “Such unyielding follicles, where mere months have left _me_ a lion. How do you keep it from growing?”

Chris dimples softly. “Suppose I traded hair for longer nails,” he thanks, “More useful for the, uh, head ripping. We adapt.”

The scissors slipped into his pocket, Eddie brings his hands up the side of Chris’ face, holding him as he cranes up to meet in the middle for a kiss.

He can hardly turn away when they hear a rapping at the door frame, Eddie’s eyes stuck on the mist that clears and then swirls again when he finds something in Walker’s bluish gaze.

“Not bothering,” Maddox interjects, “But I’m gonna leave these here for you, Eddie.” He bends down to place multiple thick, brown folders on the ground by the doorway. “No repayment needed.” He turns to go, dark brown hair ruffled and _barely_ anything conspicuous inside his prison jumpsuit aside from the authority with which he talks, but turns around and snaps before he leaves. “Chris, though, wanna see you sometime this week. I’m gonna let you rest up a while but you ready to bring some of your people back here? I’m thinking… five to ten at a time.”

Chris pulls slightly away from Eddie, drawing his stature up. “Yeah, Maddox, what’s going on here? You trying to start your own prison?”

The leader shows nothing but faint amusement and whole comfort. “Poor wording, Chris, which is what’s always been the issue here. I’ve seen firsthand how the lines between hospital and jail can turn people into broken monsters. S’long as things are in my hands, I’m gonna keep my people comfortable, cared for. And I’ll do the same for yours; the ones who won’t fight it.” He flicks his eyes to Eddie, going whimsically negligent. “Like the hair.”

Chris looks like he’s going to press the prior issue, but withdraws instead. “Yeah. I’ll come see you,” he agrees.

When he’s gone, Chris rubs Eddie’s back absentmindedly. “Think he was a patient here?” Chris wonders to Eddie.

“Likely.” Eddie nudges out of Chris’ hold and ducks under his leg to reach the documents, hefting them up and carrying them over to the bed. “I asked him if he could give me my files,” he explains to Chris, flipping the pages. Most of it consists of medical files, of which he’s has a lot- court documents, psychological evaluations. Then he gets to the other half of the photos that they saved for themselves. “Wanna eat these too?” he asks heartlessly.

“We’ll get rid of them,” Chris hastily assures, jumping down to take the pile into his arms and stack them underneath the bed, trying desperately to ignore the images caught.

“Please don’t feel pity for me.” Eddie curls up onto the bed, looking weakly at Chris.

“I’m not,” he swears, pressing down beside the other and putting his hand on his knee. “They taught you some great tricks.” He strokes his hand through Eddie’s hair, freeing loose residue from the new cut. “And they will never see something beautiful as you spread willingly on my bed.”

“You’re disgusting,” Eddie dismisses, yanking his head away but coming back to press it into Chris’ chest. “I could kill you,” he adds.

“And I hope you might,” Chris responds, wrapping both arms around Eddie and pulling him in, “To make me one of your darlings, I could bear that.”

-

“C’mere,” Chris calls to Eddie, tiredly rolled on his side near the wall but insistent on staying awake. He turns his head to face the older, shifting through his files. A stack of downturned papers are piled on the floor, blacklisted and prepared for disposal so Eddie will never have to look through anything compromising.

Groggily, Eddie crawls forward on his knees, half-sleep trailing behind him. “Mm?” He looks over the lines of formality that Chris is pushing towards him, a certificate with the details penned into it. He sees his name, scripted in his own cursive.

“Dunno what it means to you,” Chris shows him gently, what might be a military insignia, “But it’s your Section 8, when you were discharged.” He tilts his head, palm folding flat on top of the page. “I’ll keep looking for more, but… it’s proof.”

“I believed you,” he shrugs.

“I don’t,” Chris wrests from him, “Here too long and your memories start to seem fabricated- turned into Dr. Morgan illusions so she can increase your Quetiapine.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say, brushes his fingers over the document and feels the convex surface where the ink has raised the paper. He wonders where he signed- on site, or chained to a monitored table, waiting to be sorted into his two alternatives.

“Let’s look around,” he decides, neatly packing the record back in with the others.

Chris doesn’t talk about his experiences here, Eddie notices; his own immediate memory stumbles, whenever he recognizes that Chris has been through the same things he has. Is. Chris looks like a guy who needs a dune more solid to cross. Eddie worries about the ambiguity of his crusade, and how the unmarked sides must be fucking with his motive.

It’s hard to get him out of the bed, so Eddie smiles and coaxes to him. “Scout the perimeter?” he asks, and Chris makes a knowingly charmed face.

-

Chris never looks comfortably at any of the rooms they pass, so Eddie keeps them geared straight.

Not without picking up house details, however. Each room is as equally under-supervised as the next, idle for patient use, but Chris points out the black, blinking eye in each corner and reminds Eddie of the cafeteria arrests. Residents are stunningly placated, reading from the communal bookshelves, pressing loose piano keys, laying words and colors across game boards. Eddie can imagine living like this: he’d thrive in gradual degradation, sticking his diluted mind into minute tasks until sin is forgotten and all urges quenched.

They could be, he thinks, with the proper lack of passions used in coaxing them out. Great flurries of peace and exuberance, whether within or without, hasten him towards destruction. He likes to narrow his eyes on his dad and fix the blame indefinitely. The blame is on himself. And the energy of the people around him.

Chris exudes too many emotions, spiraling off his body and breaking into cones or irregular cut shapes. If he can get Chris out, maybe- he can stay here, grow bland in the empty clay of sucked-dry nutrient that nobody has, save for Maddox.

They go back to the dining room, now full of noise and bodies. Eddie looks ahead and he sees the two men with their notebook between, vacantly etching marks into the paper. The drag their limbs, hollowly addressing the game until symbols cover their lines. They both play x, and they both win every time.

He flinches when Chris rests his busy hand on Eddie’s shoulder.


	4. Whistle Pig.

They suit him, and Eddie watches from the bed.

“Few more scraps of leather, some gloves, a belt for the tasers and batons…” Maddox lists off the outfitted improvements, equally as much of a spectator as Eddie is, but with his arms folded and head tilted in the evaluation of Chris’ battle-ready body. There’s a helmet clamped around Chris’ scalp, draping a cloth which raises up to cup his mouth and nose so that only his eyes remain- as if he isn’t instantly identifiable by the insistence of his stature, and the amount of ground his one body demands to hold.

Upon Maddox’s order, a subservient patient velcroes crude pads around Chris’ elbows and knees, protecting the joints on which his dependency for attacking and fleeing are hinged. Eddie himself is spongey, still in his pajama-soft jumpsuit, and he anxiously grinds his teeth together before interposing, “I can fight with him.”

Through the obscurance of thin black fabric, Chris’ eyes latch onto his, and he sees the older present a curt nod just as Maddox begins moving his head in a gesture of denial. “Eddie-” he starts, as if a delicate matter, “I have a plan for you; personalized _to_ you.” His voice takes on a note of purposeful flattery. “When Chris succeeds in bringing the rounds in, I want you to start our initiation process. You’re, ah.” He smiles. “Good with an intimate knife. This job will suit you better, and you don’t even have to change.”

Chris’ gaze on Eddie holds, and though his eyes narrow in warning, he does not verbalize a protest.

“What will you have from me?” Eddie wonders as he rips his attention back to their counsellor.

With a pat to Chris’ shoulder, Maddox draws one of his guards near with a curved finger. “Loran will show you where our downstairs equipment is; help you get acquainted with the machinery while we make our way across the unit. Once Chris passes a patient off, he’ll be in your care. You gotta just keep working on him until he complies. Good?”

Though he doesn’t have adequate clarity, Eddie gets up and consents, heading towards the distant guard who waits at the door. Chris grabs him by the arm as he passes, the bigger’s fist rough with scaled leather that all-but makes up for the loss of his claws.

“Fuck em up,” Chris says harshly, muffled, instead of wishing Eddie be careful, or telling him to call on him if he should get lost. A smile curls across his jaw at Chris’ hard eyes pressed down on him. “Take back whatever they took from you first. And then take a trophy.” He doesn’t release Eddie, but pulls the male’s right arm into his other fist, gripping him by both limbs.

A cold hand to Eddie’s shoulder gently guides him away, Maddox quietly urging Chris to let go. He does. “We gave him a moderate steroid- just until after he’s finished fighting,” he explains. “You’ll see him soon.”

Chris replaces Eddie’s arm with two lengthily weapons into his palms, and Eddie follows the guard who will soon bequeath him with his own.

-

Maddox hangs towards the back, flanked by half a dozen guards that orbit around him as if he’s a fragile zygote, meant to grow and observe but never enter the inner ring of battle.

Chris is also assigned his own group of combatants, but they put him center and front, for he needs them not for protection, but for the numbers- and so he has enough bodies to ensure somebody will be able to catch the procured patients he will be flinging back. More of them crawl around above their heads, unscrewing vent covers to be ready to drop down if things become dire.

He proceeds forward with self-affirming confidence, tracing the halls back to D block, from which the rest of the cell groupings begin to appear. They enter the stairwell for E block first, to work their way down the line, but the entire block appears abandoned and disheveled when they burst through the doors.

“We don’t expect prisoners ‘till C,” Maddox informs from behind as Chris surveys the familiar layout of the holding area, all its furniture tipped or broken on the floor. Walls are bashed in; blood covers the ground, but there are no bodies about. The closest memory to humankind are the long-legged bugs scurrying away from their boots, but far from finished licking up the wet meat on the floor.

A whimper explodes from the rear of the room; Chris has his iron baton out of the belt and in his hands before anyone else, stalking quickly in the direction of the noise.

“Here,” he calls, shoes crunching over broken containers and discarded tools, approaching a malnourished, cowering man hiding between a cell wall and its built-in bedframe. He bends down and grabs the man from behind the bed by his shoulders, thrusting the limp body into the arms of Maddox’s trailing men.

“Let’s go on to C,” Maddox suggests from the doorway, stepping aside to let two men escort the semi-struggling patient away. Chris pivots to watch them as they depart to Gluskin.

The men moving in secrecy follow them from the beams of the ceiling.

-

It’s not in the same area of basement where his previous installment had been, but Maddox’s customized torture quarters are vividly reminiscent of Dr. Morgan’s, if not entirely modeled after hers. The addition, Eddie notices, is a small machine placed by the gurney, connected to bands of electrodes that wait for soft flesh to attach to. Eddie refrains from fiddling with the shock tool as Loren sets about straightening the room, leaving his partner leaning back against the countertop.

“This what they did to you?” Eddie provokes with an eyebrow tweaked, aiming to coax a reaction out of his assigned instructor. He shrugs at the silence, turning to inspect the contents of this room’s drawers. “I used to have charge over patient torture,” he discloses purposefully, replacing the scissors in his pocket with a small blade he’s found, “But such competency was gained from sitting in the chair first. The empathy really helps you know what you can do to hurt people. The things you pray that they won’t do to you skillfully reveal what the best inflictions are.” He peers through the side of his vision to see Loren non-responsively opening the lid of the shock therapy machine.

Finally the man turns, a jumbled collection of wires in his hands. “To administer electroconvulsive therapy, place two electrodes on the patient’s temples and secure them with the band,” the guard reverberates as if reading through a manual, “Electrodes under straps on the wrists to restrain, straps on the ankles, and open nodes to the heart. 500 voltage for emotional correction, 750 for behavioral modification, or appropriate increase for those of exceedingly strong stubbornness. Do not approach 1,000 unless death and disablement are willed.” Loren places the technology on the stretcher.

“How many watts did you get?” Eddie presses, walking near while grinning in violent amusement. “Just enough to sever _your_ will? Or did you learn that from your master himself?” He tips to touch his fingers to the padded leather, then the cold iron buckles that enclose around the skull. He doesn’t know how he feels about this method, not sure he’s ever experienced it- but then, just because he’s been asked to utilize it doesn’t mean his other tactics are not permitted as adjunctive treatment options.

The eyes that Loren suddenly casts on Eddie are what can almost be described as weary, as he watches the male examine the device he’s familiar with. “I don’t take pleasure in inflicting the same harm inflicted on me,” he spontaneously speaks in a voice much more individualized than the formality of tonelessness that Maddox makes them display. But the flare of personality is gone by the time Eddie turns his eyes back on the young patient.

A cluttered noise of boots in the hallway interrupts them. Loren pulls forward the gurney.

-

“Grab him!” Chris yells as a body thrashes against his chest, wriggling in the lock of the solider’s hold.

Finally, a man reaches out to tug the fighting patient away, but Chris smashes the baton down on his skull too hard and is forced to throw the body aside. “Stay in your bounds,” he snarls through his bleeding lip, where he was scratched earlier. “We’re not even that deep in.” He wipes a rivulet of blood away on the back of his edged glove and resumes speeding towards B block.

Maddox is waiting safely in the halls of E, but most of his men accompany Chris into the following cells where his former people are. He hears them stirred from here, their voices loud and declaring, the scattered violence of those in blocks D and C alerting them of Chris’ coming force.

A flurry of patients run in every direction except towards them, becoming as scarce as frightened prey animal. They are filthy and tattered, living in the disrepair of Chris’ fallen enforcement, hungry, undressed, and unclean. He’s sure that to them now, he is just a symbol of the blame they have for it. He does not need to stress to himself the angry pride that announces he was the only one commanding enough to keep the chaos in order. And they revoked him as their leader- so now he may do what he will and owe them nothing for it.

His heart fires rapidly in the heavy, hot gear, so he grunts a direction and begins running towards the next unit, pulling the taser out and setting it into his dominant hand.

There are screams when he thrusts open the door and his men burst through on every side, spreading out to hinder the ones that cry out in attack, and grab whoever is fleeing in terror. Chris slashes at the air with his bat to make a clear radius around him, watching one guard tackle a patient to the floor with a baton pressed to his neck, and another grab a male by the cuff of his jumpsuit and throw him at another assailant. He has no more time to absorb the scene, has to tune it out, to run into the battle and take down whoever he can.

He _does_ notice the state of the stations that they had all set up together. Even their bare equipment in the form of bins and chairs are gone, reducing his people to uncivilized creatures who don’t wash their clothing or share their meals. But he does not forget that he was one of them; he does not forget that they were taught to be this selfishly traumatized. Even that doesn’t keep him from shocking five men to their bellies so they can be dragged away.

A man charges at him yelling about betrayal. Before the words even reach him, he has his hand out and has cracked the patient’s neck, head mangled to the side. He thinks about tearing his flesh from bone, watching blood escape down the exposed funnel of his ribcage, plainly to achieve validation in the face of what they’re doing.

“That’s enough for now!” he hears one of his new allegiances shout from behind, “Take no more!”

Chris releases his fist and hears the body thump before he turns to run back to his commander.

-

“Shut him up,” Eddie growls at the three who battle the acquired patient into the straps of the gurney. One of them throws a fist at the victim’s mouth, using the moment of confused pain to tie down his wrists. From there, it’s not hard to get the ankle straps on, and Eddie steps between them to join, tucking a spongey orange plug between the male’s teeth and buckling his jaws together so that it stays.

He’s ready again. It’s not _exactly_ the same; it’s not careful steps and sterile equipment, with doctors backing up into their exact, incrementally-based spaces. There was something colder to that, when the medical team would form its unfeeling formation of collaborated pain-giving and remain grimly indifferent throughout. “Leave me with him,” he grumbles tenderly, laying the flat of his palm on the man’s cheek. It will not be like that. He will experience obvious pleasure and the messiness of its entropy will reflect exactly what the patient is going through.

He allows a forgiving look to pass to Loren, and adds, “You too.”

While the other two men retreat, heading back to the battlefield, Loren steps forward and looks Eddie down. “Start small, increase.” He has lowered his voice so that the victim cannot hear. “You can’t work backwards from a dead body. Constantly keep him sentient and self-aware after every round. Trade shocks for steel when interrogating. As soon as he can no longer summon his own name to memory, even under the rod, you’re done.” The man makes muffled cries around his gag, maybe hearing this after all.

Eddie strides back to the table and hears the thick door close behind him. He passes his fingers over the person’s lips and digs them past the bindings, into the inside of his cheek. He’s pulled the strap and ball off center and the yelps are instantly amplified.

“What’s your name, then?” he insists.

-

Chris bats them to the ground.

Eddie places incisions under their lower eyelids and orders them to repeat anecdotes to him about his past.

They learn the difference in anatomy between cracking fists and careful knuckles; the way it is impossible to compare the wideness of a broken rib to the precise stick of a blade into a delicate flap of skin.

And then Maddox’s men cart them all away.

“You get what you wanted in D?” Chris asks unfeelingly as he passes by the leader on his way out of the blocks, nearly brushing shoulders as he slides past with his newly cleared mind.

Maddox shifts his gaze. “No. We will wait on that,” he speaks.

Somewhere below them, Eddie successfully creates another zombie for Maddox but electrocutes him to death anyways.

-

Chris strips off the headdress as he enters the convulsant room, tossing it to the floor. He sheds more dark pieces of armor as he approaches Gluskin, running a set of distinctly shaped knives under the faucet water. There is much blood on his clothing, even more on the operating table.

“Didn’t want this,” Chris feels compelled to say aloud, but Eddie turns around with a soft smile that sits on the spine of his individual trade. The sensation of screaming licking his eardrums does nothing for him when compared to Chris’ presence, solidly approximating.

“Might as well see it,” he counters, “Out in the open. Know exactly who I am.”

Nearly falling onto Eddie, Chris lets his body dive down and collapse against the younger’s back, wrapping his arms around his torso and resting his head on his shoulder. “You hadta learn how to hold a gun, that’s how innocent you came,” he rambles exhaustedly, squeezing fistfuls of flesh into his hands. “Suppose you do something different here though.”

Eddie turns around, barely able to keep from wincing at the intensity of Chris’ look, or the attractive, smooth run of redness covering his chin, as if he’s just eaten from somebody’s chest. Maybe his.

“Shall I throw him scraps, from afar?” he wonders to Chris, inviting him to answer. “Or do I refrain from the urges that he drives into me, and wait for him to engulf me, to do it himself?” Chris’ body is a warmth around him, keeping him contained. The fabric of Chris’ battle outfit is rough against his pajamas.

“Don’t know,” is the abrupt reply. “Same thing with me. With Maddox.” He slides a hand up Eddie’s neck and runs his fingers through the male’s hair, massaging his scalp. He roams through the locks, looking for lumps or jagged bone structure, but can’t find any signs of scaring. “You wrote about shock treatment like this. Lobotomies. But I don’t feel anything on you.”

Eddie smiles faintly, lifting his shoulders in helplessness. “Can’t help you, darling.”

Chris inhales the word, letting it sink through his hardened exoskeletal armor, and then further through his fleshy mass. “Put the shock helmet on my head and fuck me on your table,” in his way of denying that statement.

“Mm, no.” With Walker’s hand in his, he brings up the set of knuckles to place a kiss on them. “Let me put you to bed and we’ll discuss the matter later.”

Nodding, Chris lets himself be led up to their room, where fresh clothing is waiting, and new feet are being stitched up in order to be able to pace the halls with them.

-

In the deepness of a shared slumber, in which Chris and Eddie tangle together to appease their need for crushing sleep, a finger comes tapping through his dreams and brings Chris startling into the dark world, where Maddox stands discreetly at their bedside. He loops his legs from Eddie’s, which hang over him, and slides the pillow back under Eddie’s head before joining Maddox on his feet.

“Yeah?” he asks groggily, thumbing at the corner of eye. He makes for the half-opened door, bracing against the light so that Eddie won’t be disturbed by their conversation.

“I apologize for waking you,” he man begins when Chris steps out into the hall. Maddox wears a lab coat tonight, replacing his usual habit for blending in with a pair of orange or tan standard issues. Chris guesses it’s for the appearance of hierarchal dominance as he says, “I want you to look over the patients with me. We ended up with fourteen; I want to start releasing them as they regain consciousness tomorrow; integrate them into our society.”

Squinting against the light, Chris attempts to make out the vivid features of a man who’s been awake all night in the pursuit of progress. He understands him, maybe. If he didn’t have somebody to protect, and so much lined up for him elsewhere, maybe he’d be doing the same thing… maybe he _had_ been, but with lower resources, and a weaker imagination. But a part of him still insists: a man cannot mimic an institution, and a system is what these people need.

“Why don’t you leave?” Chris asks instead of answering, while knowing that we allow ourselves to only consider the options in our current situation. “How can you think this will last?”

Maddox looks surprised, his eyes falling to the floor, and the length of the day catches up with him. “I need to do what she couldn’t,” he discloses. In an instant, a shell of hardness flickers over the prior sentence. “Please come with me. Assess them as ready or not.”

“Okay.”

Through a locked door, the group are held in a specialized room, which is lined with enough beds for only two of the men to have to sleep on the ground. They’re restrained in whatever ways they can be, tied to the bed or to themselves, in various stages of sedated confusion. As they walk down the middle of the room, Chris gazes upon each patient he passes. “What am I looking for?” he asks.

“Signs of misconduct,” Maddox murmurs, flicking a stoic toe that hangs off the side of the mattress. “Look for the light in their eyes and tell me if they seem more broken than obstinate.”

Though Chris tries to examine them under this prompt, using the unconditional obedience that he’d learned to look for in soldiers while in Afghanistan as a gauge, he doesn’t really know how to evaluate these half-lidded, groaning people who he used to be completely in charge, and at the mercy of.

Firs he surveys the damage done to them. Their unprotected foreheads look like they’ve been licked with fire, and some of their hair ends with scorched frizz. That’s not anything even worth noting, however. The finer details are mixed; they vary from person to person, but it all has Gluskin’s signature.

Blood-filled welts line one’s legs from his ankle to kneecap, and then turn into deep cuts. Another has been removed of his teeth, which Chris sees through the upturned curve of his lip where a quarter of it has been cut off. One man’s eye is punctured from below the lid, with half the needle still broken off inside. There is a stagnant suspicion in Chris’ chest that they are all ready to go into the facility, if only because their bodies are too destroyed to allow them to fight back.

“You chose a good torturer.” Under his breath, the bitter praise reaches Maddox’s fatigued ears. “But please don’t encourage it again.”

Maddox rests his hand on the iron frame of one of the beds, the patient belonging to it snoring on, unbothered by the wounds on his cheek. The man on the bunk parallel to him glares at Chris with absent betrayal, his face familiar from when he used to help sort shirts in B block.

With a sigh, the leader draws Chris’ attention away. “I get it, Chris, I really do. You want what’s best for him and you don’t think this is healthy, but you can’t keep such a heavy hand on him all the time. He has to learn for himself, and if he chooses to perpetuate it, that’s his choice.”

Darkness crosses Chris, becomes his assumption. “These places are supposed to exist to keep him from having access to the tools that will _perpetuate_ it.”

“You can’t look at him like a child and fuck him at the same time.”

He meets Maddox’s cold stare, flushed with shameful vexation. “Patience will keep me from tearing off your head; don’t make strides to eliminate it.” He is seeing Maddox in a new direction, as somebody who probably was a patient here once, but allowed a sense of preordained supremacy to make him believe he didn’t suit his role as the victim. He is smooth in word and gesture, but there is a soft belly of susceptibility that Chris sees now in his weary state, which will overcome his leadership if he is not cautious.

“My men will immediately murder you and Gluskin if you do. _That’s_ what keeps you.”

“If you hadn’t hidden in the hallway today, you would have seen that masses don’t hold me,” he snarls back.

Surprisingly, Maddox smiles, carrying with it the feeling of a retreat. “I admire you, Walker. Don’t rip off my head and I’ll see to giving Eddie another job. But you were right.” He motions to the bedded victims. “I picked a good man for it. If he wants to keep doing it, you ought to let him. You’re not his father.”

Chris doesn’t feel the surge that he needs to keep arguing. He shrugs, and even the patient who is still angrily sizing him up doesn’t look frightening. “Think they’re good to go. Just give ‘em another slap before they start coming around.”

Maddox seems grateful enough, and they exit the incubation room together.

...

“Eddie?”

Chris calls out softly, the darkness of the room left vacant. He turns to the door to ask Maddox for help, but the worn man has already turned down the hallway to his own quarters, wherever it is he sleeps.

Repeating the name, Chris drops down to peer under the bed, just getting stabbed with the fear that Maddox isolated them so that he could have Gluskin taken away in the night, when a feeble voice comes from the corner of the room. “I’m here,” it guides him.

He lets the relief flood from his mouth as he makes out Eddie’s body hunched inside the open closet, swallowed by darkness. He rests upon the wooden drawers built into the furniture, condensed into its side with his head between folded legs. “Sorry, love,” he weakly imparts, observing Chris as he sinks onto his knees so that he’s level with Eddie’s face. “I thought I was in the old hospital for a moment.”

“What did you do to yourself?” Chris softly compels as he lifts Eddie’s wet hand into his palm, rubbing his thumb over the slashed knuckles that are bleeding freshly. He carefully dislodges the blade from Eddie’s other hand and nudges it beneath the on-wheels closet.

Pliantly leaning, Eddie lets Chris lift him out of his hiding spot and take him back to the bed, where he graciously sets Eddie down on his lap and licks away the blood until it’s clean enough to accommodate bandages. He reaches for them in the top drawer.

Eddie huffs as Chris glides the wrap around his wounds, then replaces the older bandages on his thigh, the wound of which is improving rapidly. “I thought if my hands were injured, she wouldn’t make me torture him again.”

He tilts his head up; Eddie’s eyes are clear enough, but there is still an intensity of delusion lingering. “If you tell me what you mean, I’ll keep you from ever going back down there.”

“Morgan,” he says; Chris nods. “Wanted me to get back at my father. She found him, strapped him in there. Made me do horrible things to him. Made me do what he did.” He buries his face in his hands, fingers splayed across his features. “Told me if I became him, he wouldn’t possibly be able to hurt me.”

Chris softens, dragging his hand gently across Eddie’s crown. “It wasn’t real.”

“It might not have been my father on the chair,” he weeps, “But it was real for someone.”

With such a discreetness that Eddie doesn’t see it coming, Chris’ thumb urges the younger to raise his head and look at him. “I’ve been in places too, where you have to do disgusting things because you were forced to. It seems like you could’ve made a different choice, but that’s just hindsight. It’s a fucking lie. You did what they made you do, not what you allowed yourself to.”

With Eddie bending into his shirt, Chris loosely pulls his fingernails up and down the man’s back, thinking that Maddox was entirely wrong. “You don’t have to go back. Ever,” he promises, kissing Eddie’s neck. He wants to slide his hand down Eddie’s pants and pleasure him into drowsiness, but recognizes it as an instinct that is the same to this moment as this facility is to long-term treatment.

Eddie blinks through wet eyelashes. “You’re a gorgeous bastard,” he speaks with some effort, tone lowered in awkward admiration. “Thick as shit and fucking Irish, but gorgeous for it.”

“I’m not Irish,” Chris hums as he lays them both back down, drawing the covers up to their collars. He rests a hand on Eddie’s cheek, looking through his darting eyes. “I saw what you did to those people,” he approaches less than carefully, “That’s where I was tonight. Surveying your work.” He tilts his head but Eddie’s expression doesn’t move. “You’re not shy, Gluskin.” He grins, lowers to a whisper. “It’s kind of sexy.”

He has no reading on Eddie’s reaction. “Not when you do it to yourself though,” he amends, pulling up Eddie’s hand to kiss the white bandage. “I love you,” he says for the second time.

The sting in Eddie’s hand competes with the comfort of Chris’ body against his side. “I’m in love,” he whispers. “But my emotions are very muted. I want you to last.”

“It’s more than just lasting,” Chris says against Eddie’s ear. Something in there about loving himself and recovering to full health, but he keeps all that private this time.

-

Eddie cries for a while in the morning; Chris disappears briefly to acquire breakfast for him, which is a quick travel because none of the new patients are in yet, so there’s no need to monitor the halls.

When the tears have passed and given way to quiet munching, Chris double checks Mr. Gluskin’s will and death certificate just to be thorough. Then he quietly relays his night of hunting to Eddie, going through what his job on the higher floors were. “The blonde was the slipperiest, though, trying to poke a knife up my sleeve even when he had nothing else goin’ for him. You know who I mean?”

Nodding, Eddie thinks back to his moment with the man. “Didn’t take much voltage for him to crumble,” he notes, “Wasn’t even fun, the bitch kept fainting.”

An inadvertent sneer appears on Chris’ face before he can retract it. “You ain’t no one’s victim, Eddie.”

Eddie drapes his arms around Chris’ shoulders, inclining for a kiss. “Liar,” he hisses, “Just am better at predation.” He drops his arms to the older’s waist, urging him off the bed so that they’re both standing, locked into one another. “I’ve decided that you would look much better with everything off, including the shock helmet.”

Even with Eddie’s hands controlling the spaces where their bodies touch, Chris still feels like the one who retains every ounce of control, every responsibility. He worries Maddox was correct; if Eddie can’t consent, then he’s doing something terrible. If Eddie can’t remember what time his body is in at any moment, then he can’t consent.

He draws back. “What are your muted emotions?”

He doesn’t get them listed off, just gives an explanation. “I don’t feel any particular thing,” Eddie describes, “Mostly… fear. It seems that I know I’m feeling something, somewhere, but it never appears in its true form. I can never focus enough on something to be aware of it. Nothing gets tuned out.”

“I would do anything for you,” is all Chris thinks to say. Eddie is taking shape more every day. The man he knew overseas wore the same skin, but was driven by a mind in deep denial and with abundant skill for preserving that. This Eddie has been stripped of all of it, leaving him unprotected, though much more rawly luminescent than before.

Eddie’s hands return to his face, cupping his cheeks, and he’s helpless to deepen the kiss that’s placed upon him. He feels himself being pushed backwards by Eddie’s hips, guiding him into the hard frame of the bedside dresser that squeaks as it’s pressed firmly to the wall. “Let me do something for _you_ ,” Eddie suggests, voice hot on Chris’ mouth. “Still haven’t seen you yet.”

He tugs at the hem of Chris’ shirt until the larger’s hands come down and pull it off for him. Eddie follows by removing his, snaking their bare bodies together. “Sorry for being such a pussy the other day,” he undertones, taking Chris’ pectorals in his hands and squeezing them like they’re breasts. “I’m much better than that, darling. Let me take care of you now. Turn around for me.”

Chris obeys with scandal on his face, resting his elbows on the table as Eddie sinks to the floor. The arms wrap back around his middle, but this time fingers claw the sweatpants off of him, dropping to his ankles. Eddie separates the man’s cheeks with his palms and dips his nose into the upper part of the crevice, tongue flicking out to meet Chris’ hole.

A ridiculous moan sounds from above him, Chris bending forward to open himself up. “That’s good, Eddie,” he encourages.

Eddie swipes his tongue up the sensitive area again, testing the elasticity of the tight muscles with the tip his tongue. Chris’ thighs open wider in response, the man settling his head against his folded arms to isolate the sensation. Eddie reaches around to wrap his fingers about the male’s wide cock, stroking him against the pattern of rimming, and Chris releases a much more muffled groan into his arm.

“Eddie.”

With his fingers curled to keep Chris open to him, Eddie crassly licks the older’s asshole up and down, flushed by his embarrassment at the vocalizations. “Shut up,” he mouths just loudly enough, stroking his knuckles teasingly along the underside of Chris’ erection.

Chris turns suddenly, leaving Eddie with saliva dripping from his open mouth and his herculean body towering over him. But he gets scooped up under his armpits and dragged to his feet, where Chris can kiss him on the mouth. “Penetrate me,” he speaks breathily, syntax almost suggesting that he’s joking, and another crossed emotion of mortification and affection hits Eddie. With a size so small that Walker can lift him like a feather, he starts to newly see the difference in their strengths, and the amount of effort Chris must put in every movement to simply avoid crushing him to death.

Holding Eddie’s hands in his, Chris walks backwards to the bed, leading until he hits its side and falls down onto it. He spreads his legs open, exposing himself.

“You’re obscene,” Eddie hums, looking upon him.

Chris puts a finger against himself to prepare, lustily genuine. “You _are_ fairly shy, then, Eddie, in spite of what I said about you.”

He walks forward, seizing Chris’ arm away as he goes. Then he pauses. “I’m sorry,” he stilts as Chris’ arms come around him, pulling him in, “I can’t do this to you. It isn’t right to harm you for my own sake.”

A thick hand travels through his hair and grabs him around the neck, holding his head back so that Chris is able to search him thoroughly. “Not just for you- I love being fucked. It doesn’t hurt me.”

Eddie sighs, looking away. “All the same, I’d rather be first. I can’t imagine it being a pleasant feeling.”

“I get it.” Chris pulls Eddie’s legs onto the bed so he can comfortably sit between the older’s open thighs with his body secure against the side. Eddie wants to learn that it’s possible for it to be a pleasurable experience before he does it to anyone else. He’s fucked men before. Here. And as a kid; there are pictures.

“It’s…” he tries to bridge the topic, willing his adrenaline to let him have a simple thought. “Even though you were the one doing it, you weren’t agreeing to it. Just because you weren’t on the other side at that moment doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape. You were still being forced.”

“Which specific event in my life are we talking about?” Eddie tonelessly wonders.

“Sometimes things are confusing, but they fuck us up. Uh-” He thinks back to when he was a needs-disciplining child in the classroom, and then when his body briefly replaced chub with post-pubescent muscle. “I lost my virginity to a teacher when I was a teenager. But it was okay at the time because I wanted it, and _I_ did it, and women can’t be rapists, right? But it was fucked up.”

Looking mildly sympathetic, Eddie languidly runs the flat of his hand along Chris’ penis. “Woulda thought of you a little back then, if I’d known you,” Eddie smirks harshly to himself, “Maybe imagining you would have got me through it.”

“You did get through it,” Chris reminds him.

“With many dead lovers along the way.”

“And one more adamant than your illness will ever be.” He shifts, lying himself flat on the bed. “Come here. We can do something else.” He slides his hands down Eddie’s hips as the younger squirms to meet him, nipping at his chin. “Still want to?”

Nodding, Eddie presses his mouth to the other’s and wraps his fingers around Chris’ cock, smoothing the skin up until he begins to grow erect again. Chris coos into Eddie’s mouth when the hand moves faster, muttering soft prompts of thanks to keep Eddie’s mind from slipping elsewhere. The texture of the bandage around Eddie’s palm doesn’t bother him at all. Not many things would.

“You’re big,” Eddie comments, generally.

“You could take it.” He makes for Eddie’s pockets and tugs down his pants, taking Eddie’s cock between two fingers and rubbing him between his knuckles while swirling his thumb around the tip.

Chris speaks as he turns away, breaking off all contact. “Press yourself against my back,” he tells Eddie, sinking into the warmth of the body that envelopes him, one hand playing with the ends of his growing hair and another snaking around his hip to touch him again. Eddie’s erection presses to his back, a swell that mimics the hurried breaths flurrying over his nape.

“Put yourself between my thighs,” he instructs lowly, “Be hard as you want; don’t have to worry ‘bout no one getting injured.”

“But, darling. Chafing-” Eddie begins defiantly, but Chris cuts him off by dragging his lover’s hand to his mouth and licking the pads between his fingers.

“Want you,” he pants purposefully, guiding Eddie’s palm back down to his cock.

Chris cranes his neck to meet Gluskin’s tongue, pulling it into his mouth where his mewls are helplessly deliberate. “I like when you’re sincere about it,” Eddie decides against his jawline, pausing to brush a kiss to it. “Don’t need to exaggerate to me- feels much more intimate when you just let yourself do what your body says. If you’re going to be crude, ‘least let it speak for itself.”

“Will you fuck me into the mattress?” Chris asks quietly, breath lining his words.

“I’m making a point of it, darling.”

He locks onto Chris’ mouth as his hips urge Chris’ thighs apart, enough space to edge his cock between the older’s legs and start rocking into the heated bundle of flesh, just nudging the bottom of Chris’ ballsack when he thrusts against him. “Let me climb on your back,” he urges, loosely stroking Chris at the same pace as his movements, but unable to get the control he wants.

Chris makes a heeding sound, rolling to press his front against the bed.

Eddie literally climbs onto him, seating himself on the rear protrusions of Chris’ pelvis. He runs one hand up Chris’ neck and combs through the back of the man’s scalp, soon repositioning himself further down so he can slide the curve of his erection between the parting of Chris’ ass.

He wraps his arm around Chris’ upper legs to pull him closer, thrusting slowly between the older’s cheeks as he keeps Chris in sync with him. When he places both his hands on the male’s shoulders to help stabilize himself, Chris’ body continues to move in the same rhythm as his, pushing back against his cock with his head buried in the pillow.

“If you wanna do this,” Chris huffs to him, arching against Eddie so demandingly that he has to be careful not to enter him, “Or if you want to put it in, or ride me, you can do any of it.”

“Can I tie you up and call you a whore?” Eddie asks with a quirked eyebrow. “Urinate on you.”

“I really don’t care,” Chris answers, broken by an involuntary moan at the ideas punctuated by the feeling of Eddie’s cock sliding up against him, stimulating the sensitive nerves at his entrance. “I’m not the kind of person to be disgusted by anything.”

Eddie feels an unnatural lightness in his body, more than just the sweat and saliva he’s lost, larger than the pool of precome that slicks the base of Walker’s spine and makes it easier to rub himself smoothly between the soft clefts. He feels the growing culmination of lust secondary to this whirling weightlessness in the pit of him. And then he realizes, his father is not sharing a body with him anymore; the burden carried has fled out of him.

His fingers wrap around the neck’s patch of skin, grinding the man’s head into the pillow so he can stretch his own body higher.

His father is out of him because he is below him.

“You’ve been so quiet lately,” Eddie mumbles as he thrusts, “Waiting for this? Looking for your place? You wanna be the one getting _pounded_ this time?” He tilts his head, falling onto his knees but keeping the man’s upper body pressed down. He uses the leverage of his strained muscles to increase his speed, unable to warn against an influx of his own pleasure as he manages to push partly inside the moderately stretched muscles. He grunts and shifts, angling himself differently and crushing an elbow against his father’s neck in the process.

There’s a reason that he hasn’t seen any ghosts or heard as much as a whisper from the periphery since they’ve been in Maddox’s wing. His father has been sitting inside him, watching quietly, making it look like Chris’ compassion has spontaneously healed him. Why he didn’t show up to be tortured: because he wanted to fool Eddie into getting vulnerable and exposing himself like this, to make Eddie a criminal again, and to victimize him in the same stroke.

But his father doesn’t struggle beneath him; he moans and his body responds, as if he has no qualms about Eddie’s weight on his skull or the forceful penetration pushing past the barely-yielding fibers that lead to the deepest part of him. He answers to the harsh call instead of fighting back against the child he’s always dominated-

Because it’s Chris.

Eddie comes on him, slipping out of the resisting muscles and brief confusion alike. The body beneath him immediately rises up and snatches him into a passionate embrace, bringing Eddie to lie down beside him on the bed as he batters him with kisses all over his face. “Sorry,” he hears Chris warmly murmur as he holds the younger to a chest that’s sticky with semen, “I fucked the mattress more genuinely than I intended.”

Even though he holds the edge of his teeth against Chris’ bare shoulder to stifle himself, a howl overflows from his throat and sends him into a panicked despair, yanking his hands back to tear frantically at his chest for what he’s just done.

“Woah-”

Chris is caught off guard, but his reflexes work faster than his comprehension, snatching Eddie by the wrists and holding them against his own belly in a powerless ball. “What happened?” he gasps, scanning the scratch marks and red, irritated skin that’s puffing up around them. “What’s wrong?”

“I hurt you.”

As Chris opens his mouth to say something, Eddie buries his forehead against Chris. “I thought you were my father. I wanted to hurt you.”

“I’m- there’s no harm done,” Chris assures him, caressing Eddie’s restrained hands with the tips of his fingers.

“Yes, I said awful things to you.”

Chris stumbles over his own amusement. “I just thought you were talking dirty.”

“You couldn’t breathe.”

“I could breathe, Eddie.”

“I trapped you.”

Slowly, Chris lets his fists uncoil, releasing Eddie’s limbs. “If I wanted you off me, you’d have been off, Gluskin.” He tests a palm against Eddie’s head, stroking him with hard love as soon as he’s sure he won’t go back to attacking himself. “I don’t pretend you’re going to get better easily. I don’t pretend it’s even possible right now. But the least I can have is proof that if these things are gonna happen, I’ll be the one to catch them.” He looks at the other, sternly commanding him to not shy away. “I can handle it.”

Eddie pleads with his eyes. “I want to leave this place.”

This one throws Chris entirely off, stopping his heart for a moment. “You…?”

“The walls are too close.” Eddie draws his knees up, folding them against Chris’ wet torso. “It’s cramped. I don’t have anywhere to go. He keeps getting deeper inside me.”

“Okay, listen to me.” Chris has dropped his voice to a whisper, hand making a hard squeeze on Eddie’s shoulder. “We’re going to figure something out, okay? We’re gonna get out but we have to be careful about it. Follow along with my idea, yeah?”

Eddie pays attention to Chris murmuring his plan for tomorrow into his ear. “We can go back down to the sewers,” Eddie thinks out loud, “Like before. We can find somewhere to live down there. Like I did. It can just be the two of us.”

Chris’ mouth is in a tight line, but he doesn’t refute what Eddie says outright. If Eddie knew they were leaving the hospital entirely, he wouldn’t agree to any of it.

-

There are new patients in the halls when they go to eat.

Chris sees the first one groaning and bandaged inside his bedroom, which alerts him to the half-blended wanderers who sit on the couches with the others, but wear a nuanced sense of displeased wincing with their outfits. Still, no one looks up at him or Eddie, and he hopes that Eddie indeed _did_ do more than just aggravate them in his chambers below.

But to his side, Eddie is trembling with intensity and doesn’t pay much attention to what’s around him.

With a bundle under his arm, Chris is forced to put his awareness aside as well, conveying a sense of silent comfort as they enter into the kitchen.

He sets down the pile of Eddie’s documents on the counter by the stove. Together, they set each one aflame in the stovetop burners until every shred of his history is destroyed.

-

Half-full, but with the majority of their preserved meals kept foraged for their coming hibernation, Eddie and Chris return down the hall with empty hands, one searching for changes in the environment, and the other taking passive note of the spontaneous mortality that it now seems to hold, dependent upon the knowledge that this place will soon be gone from them. Perhaps he felt that way about his records, too, right before they became ash, even though he was only ever vaguely aware that they existed.

“Feeling liberated?” Chris converses, gazing through the glass doors that line the narrow corridor as he tries to test himself on which of the patients are new, which he recognizes from before, and if there are enough to suggest that they’ve all been released onto the unit at once.

“Ah,” Eddie drawls comfortably, “It tends to require stubborn bouts of ignorance, rather than grand gestures of sloughing off, to achieve freedom from that which follows me.”

Chris’ eyes dart as he listens. Yeah, he gets it. One quest to the other and he easily can trade memory for the brain availability needed to try to figure out how to survive the next problem. Even as he looks into the faces of his old followers and is tingled with recognition, they still don’t inspire much affect in him. He cared for them at the time. But from where he stands now, they were just something to step on to move him forward to where he is. Ruminating is pointless. If situations are ever-changing, why should his mind stay in the same place?

Ahead, Maddox is present in his own hospital for once, pressed to the wall with hands folded and watching the traffic of his patients as they head the other way towards a scheduled diner. He looks exhausted to Chris, face blackened by disenchantment while he studies the patients, noticeably tracing the movements of certain bodies more than others.

He doesn’t suffice as a leader under any failures in character, but Chris knows he hasn’t yet learned that you cannot be part of the body that you rule. You have to rise above it; it’s lonely, and you may have no inclusion except to convince your following that you are their community, but you get no benefits of it yourself. He would not be tumbling so quickly if he had established Chris as his lower- but he didn’t. And now Chris is ready to rise above him, hoping not to do so much damage, but not concerned about looking back after he’s made the stab.

“Let’s go talk to him,” Chris undertones, met with Eddie’s awaiting gaze and sharp nod.

Eddie turns towards Maddox’s direction first, but Chris is the one who notices the focused pair of eyes on them, narrowed in emotive resolve. A part of him might remember the B-block patient from last night, or even from the old unit, but those senses dull and are replaced with action as soon as he catches the gleam of silver at the man’s side.

“Gluskin!” he calls out in warning, lunging to move Eddie out of the way, but the man is intended on _him_ and ducks down, returning from the side to swipe at Chris, stabbing into his forehead.

“Traitor!” he accuses, raising his fist again.

Chris roars out with a hand flown to his eye, bending inward to protect against the next blow, but Eddie pulls a knife from his pocket and doesn’t blink before gutting the man down the middle, stripping his chest and then pushing the hemorrhaging body to the floor.

“Discipline your people!” Eddie jeers as Maddox hurries forward frenziedly, eyes wide as they try to take in enough information to catch him up on the blurred, hectic occurrence.

“I thought I made that _your_ job,” he barks back hastily, irritation coating his confusion. He sighs angrily and shoots two random patients, among the many frozen in observation, a meaningful look that causes them to scramble over and haul the body away, trailing a pattern of blood over the floor. Maddox puts a hand to his head, dragging his palm across his face. “Fuck, okay. You still have an eye?” he asks, turning to Chris.

The older clutches the bloody mess of skin around his eyebrow, but both eyes remain bright in their contortion of pain. “Give Eddie a kit,” he demands, tone heightened in response to the sharp pounding of the injury. “I’m going fucking blind just from the flooding.”

“Who was it?” Maddox questions on the way to the backmost area of the wing, leading them through a set of secure doors that have always been locked, though neither of them have ever checked. It’s clear that this is the blueprint of Maddox’s plan; his men, ones with blander eyes and more acute obedience, go from room to room with supplies and code words, watching security footage of the main areas in the unit and sorting out items.

“Guy from my unit,” Chris responds, fist pressed to his wound as blood leaks through the cracks in his fingers.

Maddox dips into the collar of his shirt to pull out a card on a chain, pressing it to the security pad on a locked door and grabbing the handle. “You have problems with him back in the old hospital? Think he planned anything with somebody else when-”

“Open the fucking door,” Eddie interrupts, pushing past Maddox and into his private room, looking around for something that will help correct Chris’ incapacitation.

With a resigned sense of exasperation, the leader moves to his bed and leans over it, opening a cabinet on the wall above. He pulls out an industrial, bulky first aid kit, which is equally full of medication and equipment when he unlatches it on his bed. “Take this,” he instructs Eddie, who gobbles up the cream and bandages and makes Chris sit down below him.

Maddox isn’t sure what he feels as he watches them talk, Eddie brushing a disinfectant-slathered paper across Chris’ head to clean the wound and clear the blood away, but he doesn’t look anywhere else, even if they don’t notice him intruding.

“Shoulda cut off that one’s fingers,” he hears Eddie mumble as he presses a pad to Chris’ head, returned with a soft jab at his collar, Chris answering with low admiration when he comments about Eddie having apparently shocked away the man’s filters, and that he should’ve seen it coming, even way before they’d arrived here.

In the next moment, both males are looking at him, Chris’ face only lightly lined with streaks of blood that Eddie was too inefficient to completely remove. The knife stuck him just above the brow, but it looks like more of a slash than a stab, and Chris seems completely conscious- even intentful.

“I want Eddie to come with me tomorrow,” he speaks clearly, announcing his purpose. “He’s not cut out for torture. Not right now.” Eddie eyes him, aware of the important of Chris’ suggestions about the future. “I want him fighting at my side. You saw,” he adds, “He can think fast; knows where to strike. I want him with me.”

Looking from one to the other, Maddox is struck by the way that they sit beside each other like broken parts that have lost interest in merging; that have come to enjoy the various stages of distance that finally allow them to see each other from new perspectives. And so he falls for it- he thinks that it’s love that makes them want to perform the same task.

“Okay,” he exhales. “I’ll have you both suited tomorrow at noon, but I expect double the counts of prisoners we take back.”

Chris’ face lets nothing through, but Eddie smiles to himself. They are careful with every word. Maddox is steadily losing his security on diction, but perhaps he never fooled anyone to begin with. He isn’t half of what he pretends to be.

-

Eddie packs food between spare sets of clothes, lining the bottom of the bag with gauze, medicine, and lightweight tools that will serve as an adjunct to the belt of heavy weapons they will receive in the morning. He listens to the breathing of his father, a steady stream of air blown into his ear, but nothing comes of it. “I do miss windows,” he announces just to hear something else.

“Yeah.” Chris turns, lying to face the male as he stuffs the pack full on the floor. “I don’t really know where we are, given the layout of the grounds, but we’re only an hour out of the old unit.”

This makes Eddie smile. Thoroughly wrecked, their travels here felt many more miles than it was. All it takes to return the progress is a quick trudge through the underground hallways.

“Come sleep with me,” the gentle call of Chris entreats him, so he closes the bag and scans the room one last time, pressing his palm against the light switch and crawling under the blankets to be received by the older.

Eddie finds a comfortable position before he voices hypotheticals.

“What do you think he’ll do if we fail?”

Chris pats a hand down Eddie’s neck, looking for his features through the darkness. “If you listen to my orders one more time, no chance of it.” Eddie hesitantly returns the smile on his face. “Even if he were stronger than me, he’s let himself get run down. He’s not who he wishes he could be.”

“You?”

“Dr. Morgan.”

With a shrug, Eddie attaches himself against the soft flesh of the bigger male. “Yeah, well, I can advise him on a few modes of authenticity.”

After a long, quiet pause, Eddie thinks that Chris’ heavy inhales must suggest sleep until he says, “Stay by my side no matter what. We’re going to distract them, cause as much panic as possible, but don’t get lost. I needa be able to grab you at all times.”

“Then do it,” Eddie replies.

But Chris’ hands stay light and stroking, his vision adjusting to the darkness of the room. Eddie looks up at him with wide eyes, and no matter what of the child remains, Chris wants everything beyond that hollow surface. He presses his lips to Eddie’s mouth, met by the vigorous hunger of a man filled in by his own wantings. All of a sudden, he senses that the sickness inside Eddie is not his to manage anymore.

Gluskin’s sinewy arms stretch around him, stripping him of his clothing until he’s bare and soughing into Eddie’s neck, palmed towards a slow pleasure.

“Don’t regret me, Gluskin,” he begs.

Eddie smiles, teeth glinting in the light. “It seems that my memory is discarded every so often, so if I ever do, no worries about the longevity of it.” He cocks his head. “Or, leave enough of a trauma that I won’t be capable of forgetting- swallow everything up.”

“The last part, only,” Chris speaks, rolling over the male so that he can hold him from above.

Eddie lifts his wrist, touching his knuckles to Chris’ face. “I wouldn’t mind, maybe,” he thinks to himself, keeping their eyes held, “If you did something so terrible that you wiped out everything my family ever did to me. I’d rather it be you. Even if it was traumatic.”

“You have a retarded way of explaining love, but I understand it.” Chris presses his lips into Eddie’s palm, kissing the gentle nerves that tingle so much Eddie pulls away from it.

“Want you to make love to me,” Eddie says with a sense of fantasy, apologetic in his amused look. But he isn’t surprised when Chris makes the same sort of expression.

“Need to be safe,” he says, cupping Eddie’s face. “Need to make sure we are both completely ready for what’s ahead of us.”

Eddie settles onto the pillow, letting Chris’ head lie against his sternum. He rubs circles in the older’s back as Chris holds onto him, lying on his front. “There’ll be plenty of time as soon as we’re out of here anyways,” Eddie coos almost dreamily. For perhaps the first time, his voice sounds steady in itself.

Chris feels his heart tear a little bit at that- in loss, and guilt, but he sleeps in the same position throughout the night, ear on Eddie’s ribs, waking up to savor the warm feeling of Eddie’s body secure below his.

-

Secured in near-identical uniforms of battle, Chris and Eddie pace forward with their shoulders aligned, retracing the steel flooring that they crawled through to get here. Eddie sees the world through the thin hanging fabric that covers his eyes, trying to meet Chris’ as they walk behind Maddox to the blocks where they lived two lives. He feels the ambiguous pull of the weight on his hips, weapons that would have kept him safe all his life- weapons that Chris probably once gave him without a second thought. All those parts of his life have been obliterated. He doesn’t know when this part will go, only that it might be the last remaining stretch.

Before they reach the stairwell, Chris turns sharply around to catch Maddox’s attention, looking up at the ceiling with thought. “Hey,” he calls, signaling the leader to let off the handlebar and stand with him for a moment. He looks from the man’s questioning face to the walls, lips taken under with concern. “Go up with ‘em,” he implores, “Into the vents above. Get protection but be ready to drop in if it gets too rowdy.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Maddox responds with suspicious wonder. “I think that it’s-”

Chris leans in, lowering his voice. “I’ll take you to D block,” he whispers, “I don’t want to bring Eddie into it. Follow me when they’re busy.”

Maddox looks flustered, but nods hastily through the awe. “Okay, yeah,” he agrees, looking around to decide who he wants accompanying him. “Look for me and we’ll go together.”

While he hangs back to take to the inner structures, Chris moves forward to reach Eddie, who gives him a tilting, wondering look as he pushes the door to E block open.

“Sparing him,” Chris mutters.

...

Things are immediately unsettle, just as he’d hoped they’d be.

In the stairwell up, patients rush down the steps at them, using the speed of the descent to throw knives and fists that Eddie and Chris duck away from, focused only on making distance. They are expected now, modems of survival augmented by the sudden need for defense. And their anger at Chris.

But they can use this.

Chris bursts through the door first, his body hitting a wall of resistance. He bats the thick of his elbow against the assailants and pushes them back, a group of Maddox’s men rushing through behind him.

They split into individual crusaders, each with their own portion of men to fight, but Eddie meets Chris in the middle of the room for a moment of dispersed violence. Chris looks at him, holding a calm security for Eddie to help gather, and then rushes right into the bulk of bodies, using his bare flesh to take as many people to the ground as he can.

In the center, Eddie pulls a knife from his belt and starts blindly aiming for the eyes of anyone coming near him, doing the same as Chris- seeking out Maddox’s men, one by one, and cutting them down.

He cries out when he feels somebody pull his hair hard from behind, swinging to slash the throat of a brother that once tried to do more than just tug.

Eddie is on his heels, rushing at the next pair of legs he sees, but finds himself suddenly immobilized by the sight of Chris arching his shoulders back, the muscles between his shoulder blades expanding in a ripple, to take off an arm before tossing its victim to the floor.

Turning through the mist of gore, Chris meets Eddie across the battle field.

“Hearts outta your eyes, Gluskin.”

At that moment, a thumping comes from above. Chris jerks in the direction of the noise in time to see legs kicking the grating off the vent, about to leap down and join them, probably already aware of what’s going on. Chris doesn’t intend it, but his signal of notice alerts the other patients to the oncoming men, and they swarm towards the gray ceiling ducts, thrashing at it from the outside.

Chris notices the opportunity.

“Come on!” he shouts to Eddie. The two of them take off down the room, stamping past the agitated men and mangled corpses, flying through a set of doors. D block greets them with silence. Chris spins around to get his bearings, then begins hastily towards the location of his old cell.

“We need to go down,” Eddie worries loudly, following Chris reluctantly into the deepness of the unit.

Though the layout mirrors that of any other wing, there is a sharp decline in the quality of the cells, which sit in a long-term state of disrepair and disgust, even while they were being lived in. Chris hears the occasional scatter of a scared individual hidden in a dark corner, but knows they will not find great quantities of patients here. This is too horrible a place for anyone to return to.

“ _Chris,_ ” Eddie insists, “We have to make distance before they start looking for us-”

He’s cut off by Chris throwing his hand back, telling Eddie to be calm. He feels a rush of annoyed resistance slow his pace towards the end of the area, confused in Chris’ intentions, but all of a sudden the older comes to a stop, halting in front of a cage that doesn’t meet the qualifications of a real cell.

Chris momentarily feels his breath knocked away at the sight of his old jail.

Eddie freezes in place when he sees the body stuffed inside of it.

Long, dirty hair parts as she lifts her head, looking through the bars at the two motionless men. She doesn’t move, but Eddie takes an instinctive step back, visibly flinching.

“Hey.” Chris turns sharply around and grabs Eddie roughly by the shoulders just as he turns to run away. “Hey!” He wrestles against the younger’s resisting limbs, trying to shake the impulse from his body. “Just listen to me Gluskin, listen to me.”

Eddie makes wild eye contact with Dr. Morgan, who stares impassively beyond him, barely blinking.

“We’re going to take her out of here,” he steadily speaks, trying to seize Eddie’s attention. “I’ve got men on the outside, okay? We’ve got military backup. We’re going to take her out and prosecute her, and then we’re going to move you to somewhere that will keep you safe.”

The words burrow into Eddie, and leave him scrambling harder for escape.

“Eddie,” Chris firmly smooths, an undertone of anxiety in his voice, “Please. It’s okay. I’m going to keep you protected.”

He lets go of the male’s shoulders and retreats tentatively, turning to look down on Dr. Morgan, who stares up with dark, angry eyes. He leans in and splits apart two sets of bars with his fists, tearing open a hole wide enough to reach in a grab her out by.

Eddie sees the chance.

He races forward with a knife pulled from his side, aiming at her skull- a sharp slice to his calf takes him down.

“Get away from her,” Maddox wavers, holding the knife out protectively in Chris’ direction.

Chris turns, scowling. “Sorry Maddox,” he manages, “But I have to have her.”

“ _Please,_ ” Maddox gasps, eyes darting from the prize to the enemy. “You don’t understand. Patricia has vision. She wanted to make this place her own, but she did bad things. She’ll be put away if you tell them what happened here.”

“Then she deserves to live in a place as bad as the one she created,” Chris snaps.

“Please,” he repeats, “I’m making it better. I’m improving her execution; it won’t be like it was before. You can’t just let all these people run free. We still have _so much_ to do here.”

Eddie lets out a snarl from the floor, forcing himself to get to his knees.

Chris turns frantically back to the two; Maddox runs towards the opening in the cage and drops down, folding into the floor beside her. He grabs her hand.

Dr. Morgan sits straighter up, her injuries and sickness flashing in the light. She opens her mouth to speak.

“Look at me,” she mocks with a slight smile, tinged with wound. “Who will believe you? That my practice was crooked? Or that the violently insane rioted?” She leans into Maddox’s front, putting her energy against him. “It was the patients. Anyone will know that.”

Before she finishes threatening, Chris hears the commotion of the doors behind him, Maddox’s men storming into the room.

In a blur, Maddox forces Dr. Morgan off the ground, pushing her to rush out of the cell. To his back, Chris also hears Eddie get to his feet and start dashing against the confusion of bodies.

The activity flakes away as Chris forces himself to decide which one he is going to go after. The press of the sustainability of justice urges him to chase them down and come back for Eddie later. They are both inhumane beings, a system larger than the single output that takes the form of Gluskin. He came here for Eddie, but it evolved into something bigger. He’s responsible for suppressing his individual whims and doing what will result in the following of commands, for greater authority over improving the larger world. Eddie is not the larger world.

Chris propels himself forward in the direction of his target.

He catches Eddie by the arms.

...

A slow moving breeze tugs at the ends of Eddie’s hair, the color of which is darker than the waking sky, chilled with pale blue that will stretch apart when the sun raises an inch more above the clouds coating the horizon. Eddie rests on Chris’ lap, looking out at the walkway and garden that sit quietly affront the asylum.

Chris smiles apologetically down, shifting against the front steps that he rests on, waiting for red sirens to illuminate the driveway.

“I’m not gonna leave your side,” he promises Eddie, who closes his eyes against the cold sough of the air on his cheek. “I’ll get you somewhere that will be better; so much better. I’ve already looked into it.” He inhales shakily, trying to comprehend the blank stoicism of Eddie’s body. “Do you regret me?” he asks.

Eddie breathes in, turning his head. “My emotions aren’t muted,” he murmurs.

He closes his eyes, tries to descend into any kind of insanity that will submerge him permanently. But he floats steadily back to the top, harshly aware of the world he lives in. Hesitantly, he rests the palm of his hand on Chris’ thigh. His breath enters the raw air with a cloud of smoke. “You know- I don’t feel my father anymore.”

-

**Epilogue**.

Eddie looks out over the hospital grounds, darkness covering most of the details, though he knows them all by now.

The inside of the common room is warm, but he feels the filter of cool, night air coming in through the barred screen. It’s another night upon which he can’t sleep, but there’s still another hour before he must return to his bed until morning. He closes his eyes, letting them rest against his eyelids, and only opens them again when he feels two hands slide down his shoulders, uncurling his fingers and placing two capsules into his upturned palm.

Eddie sighs and presses against the man’s front, head resting on the soft sternum.

“Didn’t know you were here tonight,” he smiles.

He turns to look at Chris; the scar on his eyebrow, the blue garment that fits around his chest, the soft expression he gives Eddie. “Last minute,” he answers, nudging the younger. “Take ‘em quick, you know I’m not allowed to distribute.”

Eddie throws back the pills, then settles back into Chris. “Thank you,” he murmurs, grappling for the older’s hand. "Fuck you, Walker. Woulda wanted to stay awake if I'd thought about it."

“I’ll be back on tomorrow morning,” Chris assures him, pressing a discreet kiss against the side of Eddie’s temple. “Go to sleep now, I’ll wake you up like usual, whistle pig.”

But he waits a while longer, wanting to talk everything over again. Sometimes they claim an office and talk through the evening, over their separate meals, remembering stretches of time that no longer feel pertinent except in the ways that they inform today. Sometimes Chris sits in his therapy sessions, providing details that Eddie doesn’t know how to give. Mostly, they pass the hours gently, with a luxury Eddie has never deserved.

But it’s not luxury. He’s given _exactly_ what he deserves; what he should have had to begin with.

Chris hears the faintest of whistles and comes running. And Eddie isn't expected to owe him a thing.


End file.
